The discourse, articulated by Ved Antani, Chief Product & Technology Officer at BetterPlace, delves into the transformative impact of Generative AI (GenAI) on frontline workforce management.
In a thought-provoking interview, Ved Antani, Chief Product & Technology Officer at BetterPlace, delves into the revolutionary impact of Generative AI (GenAI) on frontline workforce management. Antani sheds light on the current landscape of GenAI in India, investment trends, and BetterPlace’s pioneering solutions, offering valuable insights into the future of work in India and beyond. Join us as we explore the transformative potential of GenAI and its profound implications for the future of workforce development.
What is the current landscape of GenAI in India and future innovations expected, particularly in workforce development?
We are in an era where we are witnessing an unprecedented scale of creative disruption tipped off by technology. Every single industry globally is going through an AI spin, and the advent of Gen AI has only taken this state of revolution to the next level. The ones who are ahead of the curve in adoption will inevitably have a competitive advantage, and the ones who don’t will probably find it difficult to survive in a tech-savvy market. However, when it comes to frontline workers, these coming-of-age softwares become complex to use and also cumbersome when it comes to managing a large number of workers. Despite being the largest representation of the workforce globally, frontline workers haven’t largely benefited from the changes in technologies to make their lives better.
Technology has not penetrated this cohort because of two primary reasons. One, the scale of this cohort is huge and nudging tech adoption for this sector is not only expensive but also time-consuming in the initial stages. Second, many enterprises continue to see this cohort as a cost factor and refuse to invest more in the form of technology to improve efficiency and productivity. However, GenAI because of its ability to automate and create at scale has the potential to democratize tech access for this cohort globally. It is possible to introduce GenAI-led efficiencies across every aspect of frontline management workflows- interviewing, hiring, shift assignment, marking work hours and attendance, optimizing skill-based work allocation, payroll and most importantly, continuous upskilling of frontline workers.
Can you share perspectives from the investment landscape on GenAI and its potential use cases in India?
Venture capitals (VC) across the world and especially in India and Southeast Asia have found a new vigor with growing interest in artificial intelligence startups. In fact, 2023 was the year of GenAI, not just in India but worldwide. Despite total venture capital funding decreasing by 65%, funding for GenAI startups increased by a whopping 110% between 2021 and 2023, raising a record $10 billion globally. For enterprises and VCs alike, 2024 is the perfect time to invest in GenAI.
Let’s take the example of hiring. On average, an enterprise has to go through fifteen profiles to hire one candidate for a frontline job. Coupled with high attrition rates in the industry, the cost-per-hire rate for enterprises is as high as $250. Factoring in the scale at which large enterprises operate, the biggest frontline employers spend an average of $3 million monthly just to get the required workers in their roles. Through automated hiring, customized assessment and background verification, onboarding, and task assignment, GenAI-enhanced HR management systems can reduce costs by more than 70%.
Take it a step further, and GenAI can be used for all workforce management functions, from auto-generating customized skilling content based on worker performance to automating query redressal for workers who are out on the field. The potential is huge, and the investments needed are surprisingly low. There are a plethora of such use cases which are in the pipeline, where we are exploring AI’s involvement as an assistant to humans, enabling them to focus more on doing what needs higher emotional intelligence, while all mundane routine tasks can be quickly & efficiently looked after by their AI counterparts.
Countries like India lie perfectly at the intersection of three circles of talent, infrastructure, and innovation. This has led to India and other Southeast Asian countries becoming mature markets for frontline HR solutions powered by GenAI. Moreover, the volume of investments is also growing in these countries, with AI startups having raised $446mn till Q3 of 2023 in India alone. All signs point to the fact that the AI industry in India is quickly maturing and soon will become an innovation that is hard to ignore. Investments in AI are not just a bubble but a milestone that has the potential to change the course of global industries. AI innovation is here to stay, and investors who ignore it might miss out on a big opportunity. What remains to be seen is how this innovation will chart out a new course for every single one of us.
Share Insights into BetterPlace’s GenAI product roadmap and plans for expansion.
We are at the forefront of using GenAI across all aspects of frontline workflows. With our tech stack, goBetter, we have introduced advanced technology to thousands of enterprises across India, SEA and GCC region to bring in massive efficiencies in performance and cost, while making that important change in the lives of millions of frontline workers. Our offerings are focused on easing the hiring & onboarding processes as well as ensuring efficient & effective employee upskilling.
- Automated Resume parsing: We use GenAI to automatically parse hundreds of resumes of potential candidates and create a summary of their skills, rank them in terms of relevance to the current job being sourced for and match them to different job openings. This process helps automatically filter out candidates that do not match the skills required
- Video interview via AI chatbot: Our telegram and Whatsapp bot allows a candidate to record a spoken set of paragraphs that are then automatically reviewed and scored for language efficiency by speech-to-text LLM models. This system completely eliminates the need for a person to be involved in a common language test
- Automated Candidate Assessment: We create automated assessments based on the skills required for a particular job. These assessments are created using GenAI and then shared with the candidates. The completed assessments are then automatically scored by GenAI which are then used to rank the candidates
- Job Description generation and customized onboarding document creation: We also generate Job descriptions just using the Job Title. Additionally, for selected candidates, we generate customized and personalized onboarding documents
- Automated Response to Employee Queries: It is important to provide the right information to frontline workers who may need language assistance or are working at remote locations. We have seen instances where an electrician wants to know how to fix a particular problem with an equipment. For that worker it is absolutely necessary to get the answer immediately -we are experimenting with an FAQ and Q&A system built on GenAI where common questions can be automatically addressed without any delay. These queries can be technical in nature or process-related. The key is quick resolution while the worker is on the assignment. In the future, photos and videos will be used as well – asking a question along with a photo to produce even better results.
- Personalized learning journeys and career progression: Learning journeys for everyone is unique, with every person having their own unique skill sets, strengths and weaknesses. Most frontline employees lack the knowledge of how to progress in their careers. With AI, we can create career paths and intelligently serve relevant learning materials and tests to ensure a personal learning path that helps users achieve their maximum potential and increase their productivity.
- Auto-translation of content: Good content is difficult to create. Contextualizing the right learning content in various languages is even more difficult. With vast organizations spanning multiple states, and countries, it is imperative to ensure everyone is allowed access to the highest quality content, irrespective of their language
- Voice-based search and actions: The recent 200 million internet users, primarily the frontline workforce of India, gained access to the internet with Jio. For these users, voice became the primary method of interaction and discovery in all the apps (Multiple Google reports talk about it). With a conversational task automation bot, we can take employee upskilling to the next level.
What are investment plans by BetterPlace to enhance GenAI use-cases?
As our next phase of growth we are looking at heavily investing in technology, innovation and increasing our value chain. We aim to double down our investment in R&D for future growth in India and outside as well, and we’ve set aside an approximate sum of $35 million for the same.
What strategies do companies employ to identify and attract top talent in competitive engineering fields, especially in AI-related jobs?
73% of enterprises surveyed in 2023 said that they would heavily rely on external tech providers to build their GenAI capabilities. Since we are one of those external tech providers, it becomes absolutely critical for us to get the top talent in GenAI to build use cases that have an exponential impact on productivity. Our hiring and skilling practices to develop our GenAI development capabilities are three-pronged: R&D, Diversity, and Collaboration
R&D
Our primary focus since we partnered with Microsoft, has been to build a strong R&D team with some of the top minds whose primary job is to research the heights to which GenAI can go in terms of solving some of the most complex human capital management challenges. We have allocated close to $35 million for this function and we have hired people to be a part of this team and on a daily basis we are churning out potential use cases and trying them out in sandboxes to see how well they work
Diversity
Our second focus was to build cognitively diverse teams across teams. Cognitive diversity helps us look at GenAI through multiple perspectives. If you come to our office, you will see ethicists, cyber security experts, product developers always discussing with each other on the best possible solution to a problem. This sort of cognitive diversity naturally helps the team to brainstorm better and learn while having productive conversations. This is then supported by upskilling courses which give them the toolkit to execute.
Collaboration
At BetterPlace we do not have siloed roles. Our tech leads do not work in isolation with our sales teams or our research teams. We have cross-functional individuals who are the networks between different departments in our organizations. These are people who are advancers, who know how to distill ideas from different departments and make them useful for other departments. This has helped us always be on our toes to avoid potential pitfalls and invest more in potential successes.
How do you foresee the future of AI-related jobs evolving in the coming years, and what opportunities do you anticipate for engineering graduates entering this field?
It is evident that the next 5 years will bring in the much-needed technology transformation for the global frontline workforce. We are just beginning to realize the change that Generative AI will bring into the global workforce. We also believe that frontline workers have the most to gain from GenAI-driven solutions that disproportionately bridge their knowledge gaps, open up new opportunities previously blocked by language barriers, and provide continuous opportunities for them to operate at higher and more productive levels, earning better wages as they deliver more value to their employers. Engineering graduates entering this field need to strike the right balance between understanding the complexities of Generative AI models while having a strong footing in the ethics of automation and data processing. Only with ethical engineers will we be able to build ethical AI models which can contribute productively to the economy.
