Good morning to all of you. Good morning. Good morning to all of you. That's it, good. Okay, frankly, this is not my topic. I'm supposed to talk on something else, much better. But then Sudipta, because I keep telling him to do digitally, I decided that I'm the best guy for the topic and therefore here I am today. And good to be here as part of the Race 24: Reimagining Financial Services with AI. It's a great initiative by Sudipta that he decided to get on with this. I think the way L&T Finance has been transforming itself over the last few years brings it to a point where I'm extremely happy that he has taken the lead to be part of this process of reimagining the financial services with AI.
Mr. Bansal, Mr. Nishi, Mr. S. Raman, Mr. Thomas, Danat, and of course Shankar Raman, and all the other senior colleagues of mine who are here from L&T Finance, and all the other guests who have joined. Lovely young boys and girls, and slightly older than boys and girls over here. Pleasure to be standing in front of all of you. As all of you are aware, the world is changing fairly drastically, and some of it is in front of us, some of it is happening too fast that maybe we're not even aware. There's a human change that is occurring in terms of migration, movement of people from one continent to another, from one country to another. In some parts of India, migration has stopped also. People are not moving as they used to move because the economy is doing well, you get jobs where you're staying. The direct benefit transfers have played a big part. Certain other parts of the world are booming, like the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, and therefore you're not getting people in India for some of the works that we tend to do.
There is also the sustainability factor, which is a huge change which is occurring. Some of it is visible, some of it is not. You saw the COP 29 exercise yesterday. Some of it is beneficial in terms of $300 billion allocated, far below what the developing world wanted, but at least some move forward on consensus. Everybody clapped there at least. Climate change has become an issue. EV vehicles have definitely become an issue in the sense that it is much more prevalent than what it was earlier, and companies are competing to see who is selling more. A lot of actions on what to do about sustainability is coming into work quite slowly, with our knowledge, without our knowledge. There are many big contracts or projects coming where clauses are put on sustainability coefficients and values, and if you are not up to it, you may not even be able to participate in it or even be eligible to take part in it. And these are very rapidly occurring, and norms are changing, the goalposts are shifting too fast.
The third change which is occurring is the green revolution. I'm not sure how far it will go, but definitely it is happening because that fuel is still not viable from any points of view, but who knows which is one. The green hydrogen, fuel cells, transportation of ammonia, lithium batteries, sodium batteries, and many of the things that we're hearing now. Wind energy was not a big great word, but today there are gigawatts of wind energy being produced. Wind energy was predominantly onshore, now you find huge wind energy plants coming up offshore. You find gas being used more relevantly. Suddenly you find nuclear getting revived in a very big fashion. It was a bad word after Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and Fukushima. You find some burst of coal energy, but I think it's for a short while. You find gasification plants coming up. These are all massive changes, very rapidly occurring. What it tells you is that if you're not in it, if you don't have the technology, you will get left behind. And these are facts of life.
But the most important thing that we are assembled here today is to talk about the digital change which is occurring, and that's phenomenal. What little I have seen, I came up in the non-digital world predominantly in my life. But since about 2015-16, when I started getting involved with LTI and then LTIMindtree and with L&T Technology Services, I was in the US for about a year. And since I didn't know much about it at that time, and my boss at that time had told me that if you at all want to be at the apex of L&T, you better learn something about it. I spent a lot of time understanding the subject. And since I didn't know much about it, the only thing I could do was meet clients. And even during 2015-16, 16-17, 17-18, when I met the clients, this word 'digital' was ever so often coming out. IoT, connected world, connected devices, all these were very often heard. And in front of my eyes, I saw the things changing, terrifically changing. And today, if you go into a meeting and if you are not having the services ability, capability for such, and if you're not able to get into this, you're out. That's how much the world has transformed.
There are IT companies and technology companies which are into it, which have gone far ahead, and there are IT and technology companies which have lost out because of this. And therefore, the world is reimagining itself too fast. And before that world got sort of moved on, you got into this world of artificial intelligence. It started small, not that it was not there before. Data, data lake, and analytical capability on that was very much there. But the way it has moved the last few years is simply unbelievable, really unbelievable. I think keeping all this in view, in our country also we decided to go through the digital path. And if you really get down into details, you find how advanced we are in many aspects compared even to many advanced countries. The vision shared by our honorable Prime Minister during the Independence Day speech of 2021, where he said AI is just not artificial intelligence but also hopefully would lead to an aspirational India, makes us think about this topic of AI in a totally different manner.
The aim to promote a digital economy has really come into play. Whoever thought you go to buy a tomato or a lady's finger, you can pay through some mobile, and that person is willing to accept it. Mentally, I'm still not used to it, but that's the world today. Whoever thought you could sit in your house and press some buttons on some mobile, and some Zomato tomato comes in with one gulab jamun or some packet. It's something which is inconceivable. Today, the only child in our house is our dog, and from across the world, my two sons and daughter-in-laws order something for that guy. And any package that comes, courier package that comes to the door, he rightfully thinks it is his because most of the time it is for him. And that fellow is at the door barking, and even if it is for my wife, he demands that it be first given to him. I didn't know even the dog would get digital or artificial intelligence. That's the way the world is today. I'm still unable to come to a grasp with it, but that's the real world today, and we got to believe it and take it forward in that particular sense.
Today morning when I was coming for this, I said beyond the notes that my EAs and others have given to me, let me ask ChatGPT for what do I talk on AI. I told it this is a topic called Race and Reimagining Financial Services conducted by L&T Finance, and give me some few points. And that fellow called ChatGPT gave me some 20 points. 90% of it went like a bouncer above my head. But then before my exercise, I try to read it, and then while running on the treadmill, I put it on the tablet and try to read it. And then after that end of it, I asked, 'Can you give me more sensible points?' It gave me another 20 points. And so I felt all of this was above me. Therefore, I'm talking something which I can talk right now because the world is totally flabbergasting from that point of view.
I've been lucky that as part of L&T Finance now, Sudipta keeps, keeping in view my overheads, tries to take me to the villages and towns where L&T Finance is present. And it is unbelievably stunning to see the way digital has entered the society. A very low-income, normal lady has the ability to use a smartphone or a normal phone to not only digitally transact but understand what is happening. There's no man sitting in front of her, no man sitting behind her. She's sitting with four or five other ladies, and she's able to digitally transact the loan that she wants, including intelligently understanding that what the computer does or what the network is doing is to know herself much better. She's willing to share her passbook, which is also highly digitalized. And it is simply stunning for me that this kind of transformation has taken place.
When you go to sell a tractor, you put that guy's KYC inside, it goes to some bank server somewhere and comes back with all his details about his loan taking, loan giving, how many loans he has taken, blah blah blah. Of course, still human intelligence is used to give a loan or not, but it's getting processed. And in a short while, I think the capabilities will determine whether to give a loan or not. I think this is accelerating and beyond measure, the kind of push of technology and where it can lead to. The rural-urban divide, this theory which many of us talk about, is rapidly getting bridged because as much educated as we are, people there are equally educated if not better because of the use of technology. They have access to information, they have access to which finance company does what better, they have access to weather data, access to crop data, access to other intelligent sources of data, including how to get a better loan and such. And therefore, this is an astonishing world where if you're not ahead of the competition or you're not ahead of where you need to be, you tend to lose out.
All this will also make people more lazy because many things which are earlier done by some means are now going to be done by the phone or the internet. But that's the new world. Early days when you tell children to go and play, at least when I was in, get out of the house and play cricket. Today when you say go play cricket, they go to the internet and play cricket. That's the changing world. And there's no Dream11 where you can bet, where you can artificially through artificial intelligence create cricketers, create different models and be on with it. You get up in the morning, I read the newspapers. Two fantastic newses today, I don't know how many of you read. First is that in the India index on AI is one of the largest in the world, and next to us the maximum ecosystem of startups. And when you go deep into the paper and read, many of the names are not even pronounceable by me, but those are the kind of startups that have come into the ecosystem. The second is that Nvidia has announced a new form of AI where they can modify voices, change voices, and make music and so on and so forth. Of course, we sing the karaoke and modify voices without AI, but Nvidia has found a better way of doing changing voices, then that may be more acceptable tomorrow than our karaoke voices.
The national strategy for artificial intelligence and India AI program will also come into work, and government has also allocated more than 10,000 crores towards AI. And I'm sure this will be towards startups and people interested in that part of it. This what it does, it does make a remarkable shift from a traditional industrial agricultural mindset into the world of AI and digital mindset. That's what all this ecosystem will create. It's a game changer. And for a country like us, which has massive divides of income, this is a true game changer because what one has, somebody else will also be able to have in equal proportion because it's all through the net and cloud.
I thought I'll give you some examples of AI uses both within L&T and otherwise. Earlier today in the morning, Deo might have told you about what fantastic use cases which is happening in L&T Finance itself. Today when you go to give a loan, you make that person stand in front of his house, you take a photograph, and he's got AI algorithms behind him which can zoom beyond the guy back to his house to check whether he's got a microwave, whether he's got a refrigerator, whether he's got a TV set, he's got whatever, and to assess whether this guy is really worth giving a loan. I never thought that was possible. But few months back, he made a presentation to me, and I thought that was a really remarkable way of looking at income, disposable income, ability of a person to be aspirational, ability of a person to buy many things, and that means he bought those things and paid those loan backs, and that's why those things are still in his house. There are very, very innovative ways of using intelligence to look at how to propagate loan services.
There are apps like Kisan AI which has come up, which is using large language models to not only store all kinds of farm and crop data but also is able to talk in local languages. So one farmer can communicate to another farmer, he may speak in Hindi, another may speak in Bhojpuri or Telugu, and they're all able to communicate with it to disseminate data, to understand data, to buy, sell, and to move forward things including hiring of tractors, ploughs, harvesters, whatever. These are remarkable things. On healthcare, many of you know that remarkable changes have occurred. Our own IT companies do fantastic things, like one of the examples is during COVID, you could put thousands of photographs of your lungs inside, and if you are at various stages of COVID, each can be bucketed in different buckets. And whenever if you had COVID or not, it could tell you what stage it's in, and appropriate treatment could be taken. Again, it's data lake, data analysis, and coming out is the right option for what solution. Today, for many, many things you go to the doctor, these kind of analytics is used.
In our own workshop at Hazira, the heavy engineering workshop, we do massive welding and some very critical weldings. And there's no one welder sitting in one booth and doing six weldings of huge overlays, overlays of huge circumferential caps, which is unimaginable earlier. One welder has to go and do it, and there would be two helpers to give him the flux and welds and whatever it is. Today, one welder sitting in an air-conditioned booth does six weldings. Frankly, he can sit in his house and do the welding, he need not even come to the office. Unimaginable. And he likes to sit in the air-conditioned booth because Hazira at the best of times in summer is 45 degrees centigrade, and the shops are hot, whatever we do. And today, because he's sitting in an air-conditioned booth, his productivity has gone up because he does not want to go home because office space is more air-conditioned than the house space. And second, because he's using intelligence to do this welding, today he just sits and nods his head at whatever is happening. His tea comes in a trolley, his welding comes in a trolley. We're trying to make it robotic also, so frankly, he'll not even get out of his booth. The remarkable change in a very age-old workshop.
On top of it, there are small missions or bots running over the weld on which data has been fed of thousands of welds, and is able to go around the weld, and these are diameters of 3 meters and 4 meters, to see the penetration of the weld, the width of the weld. It can look at the quality of the weld and immediately say the weld quality is good here, bad here, and immediate corrective actions can be taken. And it is able to say that because of artificial intelligence, because millions of data have been fed inside to correlate with whatever is happening to check and come out with the right thing. Again, at least for me, it was not conceivable, though I am for technology, etc. I said do digital, but I didn't know they will do this form of digital also. And that's where it is today. So these are remarkably fantastic changes. And what's happening because of that, our what you call as they call it, RFT, the weld quality standards is less than 2%, and 98% of the jobs are first-time right, which is very, very difficult in welding. And that's how far technology takes you, and maybe it will improve even further over a period of time.
There are other chats, the other AI apps or small programs being launched where entire compliance data, analytics, RFT correlations, etc., can be done very normally. There are, as you know, retail artificial intelligence has come up, where as soon as a person enters a store, based on his background data, we call it user experience or customer experience, you can tell what he is likely to buy, what he wants to buy, and you lead him in some manner to the particular place where he has to buy it, and he buys what he has to buy. And these are in big stores in US and other places, you see it. Maybe in Indian stores also you see it, but these are fantastic things that are happening. I think I can go on with so much of thing out here.
Another very important point which I'd like to mention is how data is also used to take care of safety and protecting the environment. You know this city called Prayagraj in UP, the confluence of three major rivers, the Ganga, Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati. And every decade or so, there's a huge congregation of people. Sometimes, I think last time it was nearly 270 million people, that's the population of the United States more or less, in just 3 months to take a dip in the holy waters. So the Smart City part of L&T did a solutioning there by which we put normal cameras, which through which you can, and these are edge-fed cameras, intelligent cameras, where you can know the people. Of course, children getting separated from parents, pickpockets, if it is happening. They even fed the photographs of the goons around that place, and they could be identified in the crowd. And one of the remarkable things they did, the entire crowd was moving towards a particular ghat for taking the dip, and that ghat was already overcrowded. And this was able to tell the police that this much amount of people going there can create a stampede, and therefore you move the crowd to the next ghat. Now this, in earlier times through manual methods, was absolutely impossible to do. But with this kind of technology available today, both cameras, edge cameras, artificial intelligence, and all that, it was possible to do this. And thereby you prevented a stampede and saved tons of life, huge, huge amount of life. So these are crazy solutions that are possible to the use of artificial intelligence.
I think this will continue to happen, and the world will propel us towards this particular direction as I see it. And Mr. Bansal is giving a great example where the Reserve Bank of India is capturing data of citizens, their banking methods, their ability to bank well. And this is a process of democratization of such data, by which good companies which are trying to improve their methods of functioning, reduce the risk, and do a better form of business, including treating the customers well, can have access to this kind of data to improve themselves from many points of view, including the risk factor that comes in and dealing with such business. At some point of time, data sovereignty will come in. And one of the reasons why L&T entered the data center business is also to be part of that, because as an organization, we believed that we need to be where the country is going, where the country is trying to grow, they're trying to put this emphasis on. And if data sovereignty becomes important, a national company like us being in the space makes a big difference.
We also invested in a company which has got close ties with Nvidia, got GPUs and H200s and Blackwells, etc., to house their GPUs in some of our cloud centers. And more than that, they also have some patented knowledge towards cloud services on the GPU. And I think that will come into work because if tons of data has to be processed, gigabytes of data has to be processed, GPUs are the best way to go about it. And therefore, having invested in the cloud services, hopefully we have an edge in that space for some time to come. I think it is continuously thinking ahead, continuously being a little ahead of times, continuously thinking of what else can you use this intelligence for, how fast can you definitely do the algorithms for it, how much can you benefit from it. The change outside is too rapid. You cannot have a wink of sleep, you cannot have a wink of satisfaction, then you're gone in this space. Somebody else comes out with something which is much better, and that's the world today. And therefore, if L&T Finance and companies like it has to be at the edge of technology, has to be ahead in their business, has to be relevant in their businesses even, let me put it that way, then they have to adopt technology like human beings to air and fish to water, and they have to swim very, very fast or do the marathon extremely fast. There's no other way out of it. And if it is not there, you will fall down.
As the saying goes, it is an aspirational country, it's an aspirational India. The economy is growing, there's a lot of positive feeling, there's a lot of good feeling. Things are being encouraged not only within firms like L&T Finance, I guess in many other firms too. And therefore, we have to take hold of this opportunity. Old people like me are trying to manage it, but with young people around us. But young people like you need to manage it with still some old people around you. That is the best. We are not very relevant for this, but you know, some white hair matters at some time. So take it forward. With that, I can only say that this is a very relevant topic today, Race 24 and reimagining the financial services with artificial intelligence. I'm really thankful for Sudipta and his entire team to have organized this function, which hopefully is a harbinger for many of the topics. And hopefully, as we go by year by year, he gets more prominent and more pedigreed people into this conference to address all of you, to make it more relevant, more important, and more sustainable. Thank you all very, very much. Good luck, the very best. Great deliberations. Some lovely speakers are there after me. I'm probably the dumbest of the lot, and I think you will get to hear a lot more intelligent talk, a lot more relevant use cases, a lot more fantastic things that they have to tell you all about. Good luck, the very best. Jai Hind. God bless all of you.
