Designing India’s Future: Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost on AI & Innovation

We provide tools and technology for people that design and make things: roads, bridges, cars that go over bridges, the phone you carry in your pocket. All of these things have been touched by our software in some way. So what we're trying to do is support the technological underpinnings that allow India to achieve some of its very ambitious goals. Viksit Bharat has some very ambitious targets for 2047 around infrastructure development, manufacturing leadership, sustainable development, and skills building. It's really important as I come to India and work with companies here that they adopt the latest technologies if they're going to achieve some of these goals, because it's expensive to build and rebuild things. Nobody has enough money, people, or materials to build and rebuild everything that needs to be rebuilt. So when I come here and visit, I'm trying to encourage people to move to the latest technology and help them get there. It's been a very encouraging trip. A year later, I'm seeing huge changes away from first-generation technologies to the most modern technologies, and we're working with a lot of companies to help them do that.

Historically, India uses a lot of our products. AutoCAD is used all over India. This is what I would consider a first-generation technology for Autodesk. In previous visits over the years, the level of adoption of the most advanced technologies—cloud-based technologies, 3D modeling, cloud-based construction management tools, cloud-based design and manufacturing tools for manufacturing—was fairly low. That has changed quite a bit. There's an accelerated interest in getting on the tools that provide the most lifecycle value for designing and making something and also allow you to deliver the most predictability. Our industries have this massive capacity problem. They are looking for technology to solve this problem, to allow them to put fewer people on each project so they can do more projects more predictably and on budget. I'm seeing a lot of change, a lot of adoption, and a lot of the latest generation tools like Fusion, Forma, and Flow—our next-generation applications—being adopted fairly strongly here in India.

There's absolutely a shortfall everywhere in the world. India is no different. You need a new set of talent for some of these new tools in order to adopt them. That's why one of the things Autodesk does is make all of our tools free to schools, universities, and students. We work with 150 million institutions and 140 million student users worldwide. In India, we're trying to do the same thing. We're partnering with institutions and signing agreements to enable the most advanced tools to be part of the curriculum, not only for students but for professors and teachers as well, so they know how to teach these tools effectively. When students graduate, they're able to enter the workforce understanding the most advanced technology. We've signed a memorandum of understanding with DGT to deliver technology through government programs, and with IIT Bombay to get the latest technology into the university. We're going to be doing more of these to ensure the latest technology is deployed effectively in India.

Globally, we give our tools free to everyone. Those 150 million institutions in 180 countries don't pay for it. We're unique in that respect because we think it's so important that students get trained on the latest and greatest tools so they're prepared for the new jobs of the future. That's not just four-year degree programs or university programs; it's also technical school programs and vocational programs. They need to learn these skills as well, because all these professions are going to be touched by technology in some way. We need the people doing the jobs today to upskill themselves to handle these more technical tools.

We're very serious about doing the things that enable the technology in every country we work with. As you mentioned, we've worked with AWS to allow data storage locally in India, which is an important requirement for government projects and private sector projects as well. This is part of who we are. We want to be transparent with our customers. We want to deliver not only the reliability of the systems but the trust level, so they feel they can use these systems without worrying about compliance, data, or what's being done with their data. We're very transparent about what we do with your data, how you can store it, and what we're doing to make sure these systems are up and running when you need them. When you're working in the cloud, you're dependent on it, and we want to make sure that dependency is worth the effort.

We are very much focused on those big pillars of Viksit Bharat. We want to help sustainable infrastructure development happen in India. To do that, we want to help ensure India is using the most advanced tools. One thing you know about initiatives like Viksit Bharat is that the amount of money you're going to spend is more than people think, the timeframe is going to be less than you want, and the predictability of delivery is going to be unreliable. We have to change that. If we work the way we do today in the design and make space, most projects are off schedule, cost more than originally projected, and are less sustainable than they need to be. If we can move people to the latest tools, they can build infrastructure with predictability and reliability. Sustainability is at its core a data problem. If we can give our customers better data so they can make better choices about materials, energy efficiency, and all the things associated with making the product, we can help them do it more sustainably. That is our goal: to align with the initiatives around infrastructure and manufacturing, help them build better factories, design better products, and be more competitive on the global stage.

It is fast, and it leaves a lot of people behind. I'll use an example at the large conglomerate level. You've probably heard recently we're working with the Dhanuka Group. We're engaged in a multi-year program to help them develop proficiency, capability, and processes with the latest tools to design in 3D, use building information modeling for high-predictability building and infrastructure design, and use tools like Construction Cloud to manage pre-construction planning—4D and 5D planning for schedule and cost. We're helping them over a multi-year period run all their projects across their 11 groups on the latest technology. That's with a very large group with resources. How do you do that at the grassroots level? That's connected to our education initiatives, where we want people to learn the greatest tools, and also help startups building companies from the ground up use the latest tools. Startups in India have grown from hundreds to hundreds of thousands. For startups building hardware, like Vibe Mobility, which designs innovative solar-powered electric personal transportation vehicles, they use our Fusion tool for mechanical design and manufacturing. We have special programs that make it cheap and easy for them to get those tools and training.

We're an enterprise; we spend a lot of money making our technology. We have to get money for it, but you also have to support people who are not yet able to engage with the technology at the scale you want. You have to price your technology to make it accessible to various tiers. Autodesk is very good at making technology available to the smallest companies, making them almost as powerful as the largest companies, and creating price points, packaging, and product capabilities that fit various sizes—from startups and small mom-and-pop companies all the way up to the largest conglomerates. We have a product for everyone, and we're unique in that respect.

You have to start not only bottom-up at the education level but also top-down with the government and large conglomerates to get them on the same processes, so it feeds down the rest of the ecosystem. To compete in the new world, they have to be on the new systems, and you have to have a price point for all those individuals. We focus on being engaged at the highest level, with building information modeling mandated for as many projects as possible, and the largest companies skilled up in these things. At the grassroots level, the social aspect is incredibly important. People go to YouTube to learn how to do things. At Autodesk, we're very focused on making sure there's a YouTube video for everything we do and how you do it. These videos are generated by people who use our products because they're passionate about them. If you're trying to use one of the latest technologies, you can find a YouTube video on what to do and how to get started, usually not from Autodesk.