SAP Harnesses Indian Tech Talent to Power AI Innovation and Global Expansion

'India tech talent powering SAP's foundational AI model for business'

In an exclusive interview with ET, the 43-year-old CEO said that SAP is building sovereign AI capabilities in India given its huge exposure to government and critical sectors in the country. He also pointed to the huge AI talent pool here and said several products including SAP's proprietary large language model are being built in India.India is the fastest growing market for German software major SAP AG and the country is playing host to the entire supervisory board of the $ 34 billion enterprise software maker. Amid increasing geopolitical tensions, many of SAP's customers are now moving their operations to India according to its chief executive officer Christian Klein, who is here on his annual visit to the country. In an exclusive interview with ET, the 43-year-old CEO said that SAP is building sovereign AI capabilities in India given its huge exposure to government and critical sectors in the country. He also pointed to the huge AI talent pool here and said several products including SAP's proprietary large language model are being built in India. Edited excerpts - How important is India for SAP, given the current global macro uncertainty ? With increasing geopolitical tension between the US and China, many MNCs are moving to India. SAP is winning those ( customers) because of its strong presence in 130 countries in the world. Indian MNCs, Unicorns and startups aspiring to grow globally are also using the solutions of SAP to accelerate their global growth. Previously, our business in India was heavily dominated by professional services, but now we are diversifying into manufacturing, retail, utilities. We produce software for 25 industries, so we are equipped to cater to all the industries. The Indian economy is diversifying and that means it will become more resilient. There are concerns that AI might take India's huge talent edge. What are your views? India is a clear winner in finding the talent like AI engineers, product engineers and industry experts. A large part of our AI business has been developed in India. Joule, our digital assistant, is mainly developed in India. The foundational model of our business AI is also being developed in India. How is your partnership with Indian IT services firms shaping up? Almost 90℅ of SAP services projects are won by ecosystem partners (system integrators) and about 50℅ of them are based in India. We are in India for 28 years and some of our partnerships with Indian firms are 25 years old. Together, we built a services business. But now as we all go to cloud, it's even better. Our partners are building their own IPs on our platforms. IT services partners like Infosys, TCS and Wipro are building great AI use cases on SAP platform for manufacturing, supply chain, and professional services clients. How will your foundational AI model help businesses in India? We are developing foundational AI models in our labs in India. No other technology company on this planet has more business data than SAP. We have finance data, HR data, sales, manufacturing data and everything. And now we are using these large language models (LLM) for texts, contents, and graphics, and we are building the most powerful foundational model for business data. And on top comes the knowledge. You are now asking our digital assistant tool to give information on the best supplier in terms of cost, time and quality. The LLM will screen texts and contracts, and our foundational AI will help to produce business data. We use the LLMs for all the contextualised non structured data. that in combination is a winning strategy. What are your plans for expanding investments in cloud and data privacy? We are committed to investing in sovereign cloud capabilities in India. We already have parts of our sovereign cloud live, adhering to data privacy standards. We invest heavily in data privacy and sovereign cloud capabilities in India to adhere to local standards. We will continue to expand our footprint to support mission-critical workloads for the Indian government and public sector. And the same thing we will do in China, US, Germany and other countries. Our software is localized for 130 countries, allowing us to run global businesses despite geopolitical tensions. Yes, it costs you money, but we see it as a competitive advantage. Many of your employees have undergone AI training, what percentage of your codes are being written using the help of AI? Today, 30-40% of our core products' code is touched by AI tools. This can easily go up to 60-70% in the next three to four years.

'Tech Talent in India Powering SAP's Foundational AI Models'

India is the fastest-growing market for German enterprise software major SAP AG and the country is currently playing host to the entire supervisory board of the $34-billion firm. India is the fastest-growing market for German enterprise software major SAP AG and the country is currently playing host to the entire supervisory board of the $34-billion firm. Amid increasing geopolitical tensions, many of SAP's customers are now moving their operations to India, its chief executive officer Christian Klein, who is currently on an annual visit to India, tells Sameer Ranjan Bakshi & Surabhi Agarwal in an exclusive interview. The 43-year-old said SAP is building sovereign AI capabilities in India given its huge exposure to the government and critical sectors in the country. Edited excerpts: How important is India for SAP given the current global macro uncertainty? With increasing geopolitical tensions between the US and China, many MNCs are moving to India. SAP is winning those (customers) because of its strong presence in 130 countries. Indian MNCs, unicorns and startups aspiring to grow globally are also using the solutions of SAP to accelerate their global growth. Previously, our business in India was heavily dominated by professional services, but now we are diversifying into manufacturing, retail and utilities. We produce software for 25 industries, so we are equipped to cater to all the industries. The Indian economy is diversifying and that means it will become more resilient. There are concerns that AI might take away India's huge talent edge. What are your views? India is a clear winner in finding the talent like AI (artificial intelligence) engineers, product engineers and industry experts. A large part of our AI business has been developed in India. Joule, our digital assistant, is mainly developed in the country. The foundational model of our business AI is also being developed in India. How is your partnership with Indian IT services firms shaping up? Almost 90% of SAP services projects are won by ecosystem partners (system integrators) and about 50% of them are based in India. We are in India for 28 years and some of our partnerships with Indian firms are 25 years old. Together, we built a services business. But now as we all go to cloud, it's even better. Our partners are building their own IPs (intellectual properties) on our platforms. IT services partners such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro are building great AI use cases on SAP platform for manufacturing, supply chain, and professional services clients. How will your foundational AI model help businesses in India? We are developing foundational AI models in our labs in India. No other technology company on this planet has more business data than SAP. We have finance data, HR (human resources) data, sales, manufacturing data and everything. And now we are using these large language models (LLM) for texts, contents, and graphics, and we are building the most powerful foundational model for business data. And on top comes the knowledge. You are now asking our digital assistant tool to give information on the best supplier in terms of cost, time and quality. The LLM will screen texts and contracts, and our foundational AI will help to produce business data. We use the LLMs for all the contextualised non-structured data. That in combination is a winning strategy. What are your plans for expanding investments in cloud and data privacy? We are committed to investing in sovereign cloud capabilities in India. We already have parts of our sovereign cloud live, adhering to data privacy standards. We invest heavily in data privacy and sovereign cloud capabilities in India to adhere to local standards. We will continue to expand our footprint to support mission-critical workloads for the Indian government and public sector. And the same thing we will do in China, US, Germany and other countries. Our software is localised for 130 countries, allowing us to run global businesses despite geopolitical tensions. Yes, it costs you money, but we see it as a competitive advantage. Many of your employees have undergone AI training. What percentage of your codes are being written with AI help? Today, 30-40% of our core products' code is touched by AI tools. This can easily go up to 60-70% in the next three to four years.