Microsoft is making early inroads into the Indian enterprise segment with its Artificial Intelligence platform. Of the top 1,000 companies that the tech major works with, more than 400 have already used Microsoft AI.

Microsoft India’s President Anant Maheshwari told BusinessLine ,“400 is a large number on its own as this means that AI is not a fad, this is really at scale and across sectors.

“We have done that survey across Asia Pacific and we have observed that if you take any business dimension such as productivity, revenue, profit, customer engagement — the early adopters get about 2x the benefit, compared to followers.” For example, HDFC Bank used Microsoft SQL Server 2017 Machine Learning Services to build scorecards for loan applications that allowed its analysts and data scientists spend less time preparing data and more time building accurate predictive models, and loan officers could make better, faster decisions.

Previously, when the Risk Analytics Unit assessed an application for an unsecured loan, unstructured data had to be moved from various databases to an analytics platform, causing delays and data-governance challenges.

Multi-pronged strategy

Microsoft is adopting a multi-pronged strategy to deepen its footprint in the AI space, including forming partnerships and working with developers. “We have more than 600 partners in India who are developing use cases and working with us on AI. It’s only 400 companies who have really taken AI. These are all people who are trying to do business, who are building the capabilities. It’s definitely a curve that is changing slope pretty quickly as we go forward,” Maheshwari said.

While Microsoft is embedding AI into its traditional suite of products, it is also rolling out new platforms like the enterprise message application Kaizala and learning platform Sangam. Both these products were launched in India and are now being rolled out globally.

Microsoft is doing extensive work in the healthcare segment with AI. For example, it recently announced a partnership with SRL Diagnostics to expand the AI Network for healthcare to pathology. SRL has a repository of more than a million histopathology slides which would be used for training an AI algorithm. By increasing efficiency in the initial steps in a biopsy tissue analysis through artificial neural networks, it will be possible for a histopathology laboratory to cut down on manual errors and process more samples in a day with a higher level of accuracy.

In August, Microsoft and Apollo Hospitals announced the launch of the first ever AI-powered Cardiovascular Disease Risk Score API (application program interface), designed specifically to predict the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). It has been developed using a combination of applied AI and clinical expertise on a large sample of retrospective data on health checks and coronary events.

Maheshwari said that more partnerships are on the way. “In ten days, I would have met CEOs across manufacturing, financial services , retail, education and media. Across the whole spectrum there is no debate whether AI will be useful in optimising operations, services and products. The real debate is what do I prioritise because I can’t do everything at the same time. People are in fact saying that adopting this is an obvious decision to make.”

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