Leveraging Gen-Next Cities with Robotic Process Automation
Please share with us the journey so far for UiPath pertaining to Indian market.
It has been an incredible journey for UiPath so far – starting from very humble beginnings, what has evolved into a powerful enterprise RPA platform serving over 6000 customers globally, of which 300+ customers are from India alone. In fact, our India customer base doubled year on year in 2019.
The Indian market has always presented tremendous opportunity for us across Global Capability Centers of Fortune 500, Business Process Outsourcing organizations and Indian Enterprises. we are witnessing a revolution where several emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning are converging to drive innovation and agility. In line with these, our product has evolved to become a comprehensive offering, which can help end to end from discovering to building and measuring automation, all on one platform
Would you share with us about how RPA (Robotic Process Automation) service provided by UiPath is catering to India’s mission of Smart Cities? What is the way forward in this regard?
UiPath is collaborating with leading smart city solution providers to accelerate operational outcomes by leveraging software bots. The ICCC (Integrated Control and Command Centre) teams are discovering RPA relevance to assist them in operating and navigating various Smart City applications such as video surveillance, intelligent traffic management systems, vehicle tracking systems, environmental monitoring applications, building management systems and so on. We believe RPA possesses a great potential to automate various Smart City processes not just in the area of operations, but also reporting, monitoring, etc. It will catalyze the various Smart Solutions being deployed as part of India’s Smart City mission, and make their operations more agile, while significantly reducing handling time. The overall vision is to create a digital workforce where human beings are assisted by bots, thus augmenting the true potential of the workforce.
With respect to the recent scenario of vulnerability in banks in India, how are HIA adopters in the BFSI vertical adopting automation. And how UiPath is helping financial organizations build the banks of tomorrow?
Banking and capital market leaders face a myriad of challenges including changing customer behavior and expectations, tightening regulations and controls, declining business health, and evolving workforce dynamics. These competitive pressures drive towards the early adoption of automation. With RPA solutions, UiPath helps banking institutions break free from the previous limitations of inefficient and complex legacy operations with expanded RPA capabilities. Our Platform enables an increased automation scope with attended, unattended, and hybrid robots. We have introduced capabilities such as pragmatic AI that present new and end-to-end use cases. Consequently, employees become more client centric and more responsive to market actors and regulators. Operations and servicing teams can use intelligent technology instead of manual effort to achieve compliance productivity and reduce errors down to zero. With UiPath and its partners, RPA initiative owners can successfully mature and scale their automation initiatives, refocus their workforce on business transformation and successfully build the banks of tomorrow.
Robotic Process Automation is definite to transform the workspace scenario, globally. What has been the stage of acceptance and impact in India?
When companies bet on RPA to streamline the interaction with their customers, benefits from this technological revolution are not limited to financial ROI alone. The human workers also benefit greatly - Automation unburdens employees from mundane, repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on solving problems and creating value – they become more engaged and have more time to concentrate on quality work leading to higher job satisfaction and increased employee retention. We are seeing this validated time and again in cases studies of our customers, who have deployed RPA, including government departments.
Software robots are increasingly becoming reliable and are appreciated as coworkers for employees globally. In a recent survey by Forrester Consulting, 66% of the respondents said RPA restructures existing work, enabling employees to have more human interactions, and 60% said RPA helps employees focus on more meaningful, strategic tasks.
Please share your views on the Government of India’s Digital India initiative. How are you contributing to the burgeoning mission?
As RPA moves beyond the proof of concept stage to implementations, it has become a strategic priority for everyone who wants to transform their organizations digitally. The Digital India programme is an umbrella programme aimed at transforming India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. Therefore, we expect RPA to become a key enabler for transforming e-governance operations by catalyzing citizen services delivery, significantly enhancing government operational efficiency, agility, transparency and help cater to the immense scale of the Indian Government.
There is also a tremendous focus on skill development for enhancing skills to make youth more employable, and RPA is one of the emerging skills globally and in India. In line with this, UiPath has partnered with more than 150 universities and colleges in India over the last year, as part of our Academic Alliance Program. The program, aimed at creating an inclusive workforce who are fluent in automation technologies, has already trained more than 20,000 students and professionals in the country.
How essential is the Data Protection Bill for Indian scenario?
The privacy and protection of personal data is a strategic topic across the world including India. We fully endorse an individual’s right to safeguard their information and prevent the misuse of their personal data. As a company, we are very careful in all our policies and operations to comply with the privacy guidelines.
In fact, RPA enables other companies to deal with large amounts of data they hold and run their processes efficiently. We have various beneficial use cases in this area such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), KYC (Know Your Customer) and so on wherein automation has helped enterprises ensure seamlessly and error-free operations.
What plans for expansion do you have for the Indian market?
We have seen hyper growth in our business and the overall RPA industry, especially in the last three years and we feel that we will continue to see this growth in the coming year and beyond.
India has unparalleled opportunities for us across Global Capability Centers of Fortune 500, Business Process Outsourcing organizations and Indian Enterprises. We have witnessed an enthusiastic interest and adoption across all sectors and an in deepening as we go forward. Our 300+ enterprise customers in India have really helped drive home the power of automation. Going forward, we hope to significantly grow our new customers footprint as well as scale our existing customers to help them realize the true benefits of RPA & AI.
In addition to this, our offerings have expanded to become an end to end automation platform. Our focus is also on the integration of ROI measurement capabilities that would help our customers in the strategic companywide adoption of this technology. Today, we see RPA expanding beyond BFSI, manufacturing, pharma, professional services into a broad spectrum of industries across the board, and into vibrant mid-sized and small businesses in the country. And, with a direct presence in all major cities and beyond that through our deep distribution and channel network in India, we plan to continue to support this ecosystem.
