We want to be the AI powerhouse of the world: SAP Labs India's Sindhu Gangadharan

The managing director of SAP Labs India and the chairperson of Nasscom speaks about research and development on the GenerativeAI front, custom and multi-agent AI, skilling as a challenge in India, and more

By Naini Thaker Forbes India Staff

Published: Nov 4, 2024 03:56:31 PM IST

Updated: Nov 4, 2024 06:10:06 PM IST

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Sindhu Gangadharan, managing director of SAP Labs India and the chairperson of Nasscom; Image: Selvaprakash Lakshmanan for Forbes India

Software multinational SAP has been present in India for close to 26 years. Back then, it was mostly focused on support-based roles for operations. Now, with a talent pool of 13,000 people and about 50 percent of them enabled in artificial intelligence (AI) tech skills, SAP Labs India is emerging as a global AI hub for the German software giant’s customers worldwide.

The company’s R&D centers, known as ‘Labs’, are present across the world, and focused on specific parts of the portfolio. “Interestingly, India is the only location of SAP where we have the entire breadth of our product portfolio in one location,” says Sindhu Gangadharan, managing director, SAP Labs India, and chairperson, Nasscom. “I want to make sure that customers who come in, actually leverage the entire breadth of our porfolio.” Currently, about 80 percent of SAP’s customers in India are actually small and mid-sized customers. “Our goal is to keep growing that,” says Gangadharan.

Headquartered in Bengaluru, the organisation is focusing on custom AI and multi-agent AI technology to drive the next wave of business transformation for its customers. As SAP’s second largest R&D hub globally, SAP Labs India is developing solutions that will set new standards in digital transformation for SAP’s 450,000 customers worldwide. “We want to see a lot more IP creation from SAP Labs India, even more than what we have today,” remarks Gangadharan, during a conversation with Forbes India at the company’s Bengaluru campus. She talks about R&D for generative AI, skilling as a massive challenge in India and more. Edited excerpts:

Q. How strategic is India as an R&D hub for SAP?

India is not just the largest R&D hub for SAP, but also one of the fastest growing market regions. That is a deadly combination. This is also why we have many of our global customers who come here because they get access to product leaders, who help them understand how the product road map is shaping and how SAP can help them in their transformation.

The next big thing is the phenomenal ecosystem that we have around us in India. We don’t just hire talent, but also go back to universities and help that talent understand how the world of technology and business come together. Most times, students only get access to how to programme or build an application. Making sure of how to apply AI to real life, is where I think we have a differentiated edge.

India is strategic for SAP. Our second campus is under construction in Bengaluru, which is double the size of the current campus. In India, our focus has been to be the AI powerhouse of the world, and that is also the focus of most conversations around AI.

Q. There is a lot of R&D happening on the GenAI front. Is there a pressure to deliver products faster? How are you dealing with it?

We took a conscious decision to make sure our customers stay on track. Our business technology platform, ‘GenAI hub’, can give our customers, access to the best of large language models (LLMs). It’s like a layer where we have brought in all these LLMs under one roof. We expose these as part of our business technology platform in a way, that depending on their use case they can choose the right and relevant model. This gives customers flexibility.

We have layered our architecture principles in a way that is quite open, but at the same time secure. Hence, the end-customer doesn’t need to go through the pressure of picking the right LLM, especially with new ones coming up every other day. I think this strategy has played out well for us. It’s a win-win for all those involved—our partners such as Microsoft, Google etc., and our customers.

Q. What is your take on custom AI and multi-agent AI technology?

SAP Labs India’s focus on custom AI and multi-agent AI is transforming how businesses operate by enabling sophisticated interactions and decision-making capabilities that go beyond the traditional scope of AI applications.

Custom AI is the next big wave in technology because it enables businesses to tailor AI solutions to their unique challenges and opportunities. By personalising AI to fit specific workflows and objectives, businesses can unlock unprecedented levels of efficiency, innovation, and competitive advantage.

With productivity growth plateauing and businesses seeking to address talent shortages, AI agents represent a promising application of AI that can enhance productivity beyond the capabilities of current software and AI technologies.

Q. What are some areas that have been revenue drivers for the organisation?

If we look at the large-scale transformations that customers are going through, it's mainly three industry clusters—consumer products, discrete manufacturing, and energy and natural resources. The beauty in these industry clusters is also that there is a lot of potential to reimagine business processes in these industries. However, I wouldn't just restrict it to these three. We see our clients doing massive transformations via Generative AI across many other sectors as well.

Q. To what extent do you view skilling as a challenge in India?

The number one challenge we have as an industry, is skilling. If you just look at the sheer numbers of talent that comes out of universities, we are unparalleled compared to the rest of the world.

However, are we able to exactly take the talent and put them into a complex use case? No. We are working on bridging this gap, not only as SAP, but also as an industry. For instance, how do you leverage AI in the area of finance or how do you apply it in supply chain or HR? I think that’s also where a lot of our efforts are going. We need to hire talent that has both, a deep understanding of technology and also a good understanding of specific domains.

We are working with academic organisations on not just their curriculums, but also to ensure that they can spend time on-site with us. For instance, with BITS Pilani, we are doing a two year master's programme where, students actually spending all the weekdays at SAP and weekends at the university. From those batches, we hire about 98 percent of them. But that’s about all that we can hire.

So, skilling number is definitely one priority as an industry, if you want to keep that edge as the technology talent capital of the world. We don’t want to be running only the support and operations kind of roles, but instead want to see a lot more of IP creation and startups coming from here.