Investments in AI Impact on CX, Experiences & Transformation

[Music] hi good morning everybody Welcome to the session where we're going to be talking about Ai and how investments in AI has basically changed the way we are doing our business strategies enhancing user experience as as well as optimizing operational efficiencies today we have a great group of panelists here across the ecosystem and we'll start off with our introduction so perhaps sain you can start first uh sure uh my name is Sachin dug I'm the chief wizard at builder. and the founder um you know we started the company with a really simple Mission 90% of the world um are not technical but now need to be digitally native or AI native and no idea how to get there um and so we've built a platform think about it as Lego meets a i to build software applications um hi I'm s bakshi I'm the head of European Investments at process Ventures process is the largest listed tech company in Europe we're a hundred billion doll plus market cap company we're Global Investors um and very excited to be here I everyone pleasure to be back in the abob finance week uh gets better every year Fa l Breaky uh senior director at iend uh with a new team uh at the group level called the AI data office uh that was formed under the newly uh appointed Ed group Chief Ai and data officer um it's a lot as you all know the Telco here in the UAE but grows to becoming a technology company across 38 countries today thank you so our first question will be for everyone here um as the world becomes increasingly Tech driven how do each of you approach the intersection of Technology Innovation and business growth so session perhaps so look I think that's a it's the it's the thesis for how we started or why we started the company you know just to sort of set you a context um we shipped about 100,000 software features last year that makes us one of the largest producers of software on the planet um but when we think about our use cases we're helping everyone from the bakery down the road to Qatar life insurance in every stream in the middle and what we're seeing is a unanimous sort of view from the non- technical audiences which make up 90% of the world and they're saying we don't want to be irrelevant in a world that is digitally native or AI native but we have a fear of failure uh and so we know we need to create software but we don't know how we know we need to be able to use AI but we don't know how and so Builder's real mission is to empower people to be able to unleash their potential by building and creating software to be relevant uh and that could be everything from how they service their own customers it could be how they remove human variability uh it could be how they can go to new markets uh and we're really seeing that entire Spectrum that's kind of like democratizing the access to Technologies for even the smallest mom and pop shops that's great and um how about Sandeep where do you see in terms of the approach of intersection of Technology Innovation and business growth yeah I think for us at least as it pertains to the topic of uh this panel the way we're seeing AI Improv customer support customer experience is probably across a couple of different vectors there's personalization optimization and then there's search and if we think about let's start with optimization first so we're one of the largest investors in in food delivery businesses globally actually one of our food delivery businesses it's going public in uh in Dubai I think today um and when it comes to optimization ensuring that you're leveraging all of the best technology to make sure that Riders are spending the the most efficient amount of time delivering orders as it pertains to personalization I would venture to Guess that most people in this room have shopped online at some point and I'm sure that you get bombarded with ads of things that you're more likely to come uh go out and buy especially going into the next two weeks of this season um and then the last one and touching on you know what you talked about democratizing access which I think is very very important something it's very key to us goes to search historically speaking search was text driven and text is something especially as we're Global Investors not may not be something that's accessible to everybody in the world you can now take pictures and you can do search you can now dictate something and you can search and that is something that's really driving Innovation and we're looking for opportunities that really are powered by one of those three vectors thank you and fil From froman's perspective yeah so if you go back in time uh and you think about the the Telco industry which is uh which is where we started decades ago you know it powers of socioeconomic opportunity economic growth um across across Industries uh and across Nations so uh fast forward to to today um you know we're going through a massive transformation within within iand uh speaking of of of food delivery you know investments in in in companies like the Kareem super app um and we think about you know how data uh in in Ai and sort of disruptive technology is going to affect this portfolio uh that we've built over time uh and you know we we we go back to uh our cultural Beginnings about operational excellence with a Telco backbone that we've built here in the UAE but now that you can see across uh you know a global footprint across 38 countries um in different opcos that we work with on the Telco side but we also look at uh companies like starsplay and the media side and Kareem and the super app and delivery um and you know the cross-pollination uh of of Technologies like AI making the consumer experience a little bit better um adding productivity internally you know thinking about how we can Implement AI to the best our abilities across this uh portfolio in 38 countries you know while applying best practices but also thinking about data privacy you and protecting the consumers that we've that we've served for decades we have sort of brand to uh to uphold and a reputation we're public assed company here in the adx so um there's a lot at stake but we're excited for the future I I think you know one of the the things that you mentioned in your question which I think is really important which is this transformation of everyone um you know if we go back to November 22 it wasn't like language models just got invented because Bert had been around for eight years computational conversation has been here since the 1930s so what was the real invention the real invention was actually a design change for the first time ever a really complex piece of software could be navigating with a WhatsApp experience and you know we we underestimate the power of Simplicity and what we're seeing not only in our own customers globally is companies are now rushing entrepreneurs are rushing small businesses are rushing to say how can we make our experience to the company to our customers simpler and I think that's the big transformation wave it's more like the user experience optimization making it easier and accessible right that's a really great point Thank you And and another question for you because you have as build builder. a you have experience working with big companies like you mentioned small smmes and and even small msmes um what do you think is the difference when it comes down to the application or implementation of AI and what are the common mistakes you see in this process so so one thing maybe just sort of useful is setting the stage for where we are um you we're at the period of time which is very similar to when AOL launched the disc for the internet and everyone said oh my God the internet is here but actually the internet had been here 30 years before um and so in November 22 everyone said AI is here but actually this is the second wave uh and so I think it's very important to understand that even though it's a second wave it's really early you know we're we're it's like a baby for all int and purposes with the memory of the world but the rational thinking of a three-year-old or a 5-year-old if you're lucky on a good day so I think that's one and so what why is that important I think the next fight I'll tell you will be shocking which is 93% of all poc's using Ai and generative AI have failed uh and they've not really gone past the POC stage so other than getting it to help you answer questions like my interview questions which I which I would have normally run through tra GPT to get some answers for um it doesn't go a lot further without a lot of expertise around it and and what you're seeing though on the customer side or the business side for all sides is they're saying we know this is going to be gamechanging and so what you've now got is this really interesting conundrum where the perception is the technology is so far ahead the people are dying for the use the use case but actually you're still not quite there in delivery and and and and that goes to my third point which is why it's not a lack of Technology actually it's a lack of investment up till now so for example if you want to do anything meaningful um let's look at like a call center experience you want every call center call to be really good right you run a call center I'm sure you want The NPS for every customer to be 30 and above the issue you have is if I when we speak to customers like we have a billion minutes of conversation I say well no you don't you have about 200,000 minutes of conversation multiplied by a thousand different variants but where are your 2,000 minutes Jun where they are no so no one's done the hard work to realize what is really the unique data versus what is the variable on top and and so where this leads to is an underinvestment in core infrastructure core software core data to then be able to really run AI on top yeah and that comes the importance of investment as well as capital which comes down to my question from for Sandeep um in in your opinion what do you believe are the top factors to consider when assessing startups for investment because it's very important and particularly in the current economic climate so it's actually interesting because I could not agree more with what suchin had said where what I look for when assessing companies for investment and I've got a portfolio company sitting here in the audience it's quite it's quite simple are you delighting your customer every day that's it and that will manifest itself in a variety of metrics but comes down to that one core thing and people will talk about hey we're going to to to further the anecdote that that suchin started we're going to completely automate the call center experience but if at the end of the day the end user that's calling into that call center is not leaving with a positive experience which was the objective in the first place you failed your mission right and so we have companies so I sit on the board of a a a a Healthcare company that's doing um medical transcription for doctors one of the biggest issues in the US Europe is the fact that there is an administrative burden that's put on most doctors Healthcare practitioners to provide notes for insurance companies billing and it just historically speaking completely mismanaged and what they do is relatively simple they'll transcribe notes from medical calls and uh from medical interactions and they'll make sure that all the insurance and billing is done correctly it's simple they're not trying to replace the doctor they're not trying to do anything anything too far falling from that and what that manifests itself in is an extremely positive experience for doctors and Healthcare practitioners and that's kind of what we look to of course we can talk about valuation which I'm sure there's a number of people have questions around the reality is is that for a lot of the the use cases that we're seeing the market size is very very big another example for for something that is really delighting customer experiences where we've spent time we haven't made an investment yet is coding C Pilots coding copilot is another it's a relatively simple use case but how do you ensure that you're delighting your customer there's a statistic that for one of the larger players 93% of all recommendations that are made by the coding copilot are accepted by the end software engineer somebody's improving my life 93% of my time and able to kind of complete my sentences that's a delightful customer experience so from my perspective that's the the main thing that we look for and I love the fact that you're emphasizing it's augmenting and not replacing humans and and that's really critical to the kind of the misconceptions around AI as well um so my next question is for uh fil so you know can you share more about how Ian's transformation from a telecommunication company into a global technology company and Investment Group the whole transition and the angle there yeah so maybe if we uh it was our it was our national day a couple of days ago here as some of you may know in December 2nd if we take a trip down memory lane it's a lot formed in in 19 1976 uh you know fast forward to today um or maybe a couple of years back in 2022 where a very deliberate decision was was made you know in transforming the company um and and you know what what does that mean you know we're we're looking at uh participating in economic growth uh you know here in the Mina region uh and looking at the technology drivers that are going to sort of disrupt uh disrupt Industries while uh participating in socioeconomic uh growth uh here in the UAE but also in the 38 countries where we now uh where where we've now expanded uh into and maybe going to sain's point on on on poc's if we think about uh you know Horizons of uh of of innovation uh you know what's which use cases are going to be the most important uh over the next couple of years uh and what comes into play commercially over the next 5 to 10 uh and what should we sort of keep uh in mind for the next you know 20 or Beyond um and as we think about those Horizon of innovation and the portfolio that we've built so far uh you know we're a massive company with millions of of of customers uh as as some of my panelists here mentioned uh you know we we think about NPS uh quite a bit we think about improving the customer experience all day um and we think about it uh in all the countries that we participate in uh while also thinking of uh you know data privacy so how do we leverage uh the the best technology that's available to us uh in the group uh with external part Partnerships uh or developed organically within uh to serve this uh this customer base uh and to continue with this you know the operational excellence culture that uh it Salat was founded in 1976 and you know iand will move on with going forward uh and if we think about the structure of our group today you know we have the BTC part the BTC technology part under Ian life where you find uh Investments like kareim and starsplay on the media side uh you'll see that we have uman enter entprise now which looks at the B2B client side of the business and applying technology to you know Enterprises uh everything that's happening of course in our core assets here in the UAE um and then a a small uh $200 million Venture fund that we also launched in 2022 which going back to the horizons of innovation you know kind of gives us visibility into what's uh upcoming in the future uh so we're able to partner with large companies the aws's of the world we had a billion dollar partnership recently um to serve the region and train up and rescale and upscale talent in the region um all the way down to a series a investment to the end Capital great you've built a very strong ecosystem that leverages on that to build Technologies for different use cases there um so sash I mean you've you know you've had a lot of experience building AI driven software de uh development sorry um what advice would you give let's say different to Business Leaders when it comes down to the application of AI because you mentioned about PC and the difficulties of going beyond that given this you know what's your perspective there so I think maybe three different angles to this right so I think angle one everything is not a generative problem we have so quickly as a population rush to generate everything um and and and so I have I have a sort of a pet peeve around this for a specific purpose which is if you imagine any piece of work writing code building an application call center phone calls uh writing a document if you broke that piece of work into Atomic units whatever it is like we a builder we think about the world as legol likee reusable features in fact if you imagine all the sets of Lego in the world there's only 2,647 unique pieces of Lego and that make up the millions and millions and millions of Lego pieces circulated and so what does that tell you it tells you that actually when you find the unique element it's reusable it's not being generated reuse is really powerful and it's under uh it's underinvested in because reuse doesn't have any error rate you know what people call hallucinations or a confabulation you can't hallucinate reusability because you've already shown it works so I think number one is reuse the second is you use AI to adjust what is being reused so that it fits the purpose of that particular instance whether it's a conversation like I said you know for a billion minutes a conversation it's no more than 200,000 unique minutes but you might use those minutes in a different order in a different sequence to answer questions so I think it's a balance between reuse and um uh and and then stitching it together with the eye or generating on top that leads to the second point which is you don't want to generate big things the bigger you generate whether a human or a machine does the generation you induce error cuz if you imagine there's a percentage error rate the bigger the thing the absolute number will keep increasing and and I think that's really important when you think about strategy because you'd mentioned something about jobs so I've yet to see an AI take over an entire human's job what I have seen is um it's making super it's making humans into super humans or giving them superpowers putting a cape making them into a Superman or a superwoman and the reason is it lets it takes away the tasks that otherwise I may not be good at doing I may not enjoy doing and here's news for everyone I hate doing five times a day uh and so a machine doesn't get bored nor tired nor hungry doesn't need to go to the toilet and so it's very good these repetitive things and it lets you free up time so that you can be more creative and more Upstream in what you do and so as Business Leaders as you think about implementation of AI you want to figure out how can I give my Workforce or my customer superpowers where can I reuse versus generate and then I think the third thing which is really important and I know we've talked a lot about it in in in the last two years is be responsible um you know the current the current age of Technology we're in is highly irresponsible uh and what do I mean by that well because it doesn't know what it's saying you know a lot of people use the word thinking but an AI can't think it's just a glorified parrot that repeats things if prompted in the right way and and here's the test go ask your favorite llm the same question every single morning for the next 5 days you will get a different answer every single day even though the answer is the same and I think that's a really important point for people to walk away with to realize where we are yeah I like how you mentioned the angle should be strengthening your Workforce and not replacing it I think that's very critical from a Leader's perspective um sandep you know you invest in a lot of different portfolios across the world so how do you navigate um crossb Investments and the cultural nuances involved in scaling businesses in different regions I think it depends to some extent on what the business is trying to build and for what specific geography or what specific ecosystem uh some of the businesses that we have invested in are focused on really solving a problem for that specific market so one of our portfolio companies is actually a hub71 portfolio it's a company called Thunder they're basically trying to democratize access to Stock Investing in the region and you know being having lived in America and the UK investing in the stock market is is probably one of the areas where I personally have seen the ability to to create wealth for myself and when we think about um you know cross border what we're looking for is what are some opportunities that exist in other parts of the world that from an inclusion perspective perhaps don't exist in other parts of the world and so that's that's one area that we're we're looking at that is is specific spefically interesting the other area that we're spending a lot of time in is where is their where is their Geographic Arbitrage so where where so one portfolio company of ours is a company called superside which basically provides design and marketing services to people in um the western parts of the world while leveraging expertise for design and creative one with a combination of a lot of the uh generative AI tools that are out there that are well documented coupled with talent that is in uh less expensive graphies so I think that as the the world be as kind of technology proliferates and the world becomes you know more borderless irrespective of kind of what you may have read in the news today or or over the course of the past couple of weeks there continues to be a tremendous amount of opportunity and it's something that we look to capitalize on and um fil you know you mentioned before around how um eend actually has a very diverse kind of U you know stakeholders and and Investments and so forth and what role do you see in emerging Technologies like 5G iot and AI playing in your strategic Direction future particularly in the Mina region maybe if I go um to S Deep's points here before I jump directly into that question but if we think about you know Equity equity and inclusion um and I think that you know the footprint that we have across um what many of you would know is is many different parts of sort of the emerging market maret where where we play I think as this technology evolves and perhaps if suep is right and we do kind of De globalize um it's it's sort of incumbent uh upon Business Leaders internationally to really think about how to maintain uh inclusion and and access to those Technologies so you know someone sitting um in uh in in a Central African country has the same opportunities uh as uh as someone sitting in the in in in in the Bay Area where uh my fellow panelist have have either grown up or spent a lot of time um so you know equity and inclusion I think is uh when it comes to technology as this evolves uh over time and you know whether we de globalize or not I think is is is critical going to your question uh so you know 5G of course uh we we we've evolved from you know 3G to 4G to 5G we continue to try to be at the bleeding edge um you know providing that backbone of connectivity in all the markets that we operate um you know there's not to get to technical but there's lots of applications for AI within 5G uh thinking of things like Network slicing Network slicing or uh or traffic management um but then you can also think about the other way around where 5G enables a data center through fiber um so we continue sort of think about uh how the two affect each other and you know as with the footprint that we have uh I think it's also a huge opportunity when we think about things like Edge Computing um and serving the Enterprise uh through some of our portfolio companies um and whether it's uh you know the biggest private data uh the biggest private um 5G installation for the ABD Dhabi National oil company or otherwise um we try to continue to be close to uh you know those Edge compute applications uh bringing together you know the latest in Ai and 5G um and what we've learned across our portfolio of assets thank you we have time for one more question for everyone here so um you know the usual kind of fin question I would say so what emerging Trends do you foresee in the next 3 to 5 years um that will shape the future of your respective Industries and in the um and in the case of eend what is that Trend observed across the different sectors that you're in so perhaps we can start with session so um you know uh so I did the Vasa about five years ago and one of the things I learned in it was Buddha said if I quote this correctly true wisdom doesn't exists in the intellect it exists in experience what I have noticed in the last couple years a lot of intellectualization around AI um just to give you a shape shift of how I think the world's going to change I have an example to show you um so I'm going to play a song um when I asked my leadership team how much do you think this song cost to produce I had numbers of $100,000 $50,000 um so I'm going to play you I'm going to ask the question then I'll tell you what the amount was I [Music] the build your tomorrow standing at the edge of possibility with an idea that could change reality no need to know the language of down this ping Road like Lego blocks in perfect form your dream Tak shape for New World at build we [Music] bu imagine that was $10000 and we just to the early stage of this wave you know we talk about democratizing we talk about about unlocking they're just the wrong adjectives the real power of the next 5 years is how do you unleash human productivity and even if I could find a better word than unleash I'd probably use that and I think that's really what we've got all to look forward to to do more than we could ever imagin before thank you that that was really great as a as a clear um you know idea for the audience as well and um how about Sandy in your perspective so um I have a a somewhat different spin on this um I was checking into my hotel yesterday and I was having an issue with my credit card um and I went into the chat support and the first thing that I tried to do knowing that this large Global credit card company is probably using some chat bot some chat support agent was I tried to get to an agent the first thing that I tried to do one of the things that I'm really curious about from a trend's perspective is understanding how as a human population how we retrain the habits that we've developed to try and get to a human quicker um to try and get to that interaction the reality is is that actually with the technology exists out there and I've actually used some of these tools if I had tried to prompt this chatbot properly I probably would have gotten to my answer quicker but I have been trained to try and go get to a human and one of the big trends that I'm looking forward to um getting to an understanding of and and it probably touches on the point that suchin made around unleashing human prod productivity is getting coming to grasp with actually how best should I be working with a lot of these models not as a trick not as to answer you know some questions not as to create a like a little bit of copy what are the things that really I can do but how do I retrain my own behavior to try and get a better understanding of what's the best way that I should be using these models um what's the best way that I can be using this technology that from my perspective will be something that will really shift um our society for the years to come there importance of Education in a way for um let's say and being adaptable with our Behavior as well thank you and fil maybe touching on some of s's points here and and sort of unleashing productivity and going back to the uh the the the equity and inclusion part there's a lot of changes as we all know happening in the in the US uh right now with with the new Administration coming in but if if we think about some of the you know what we consider to be uh you know the the winners uh over the last couple of years uh it feels like a life time but you know we we we go back to maybe 2020 or 2021 when chat GPT really hit it um and then we saw anthropic and some of these other players uh come online mostly in the US but some in Europe uh it feels like they're getting bigger and bigger over time you know they've sort of sucked up all the data out there now we're thinking about synthetic data and sash's point about hallucinations potentially and risks around that um but I think an an interesting uh thing to keep in mind going forward is you know how do we continue uh to to build an ecosystem through places like I think Hub 71 here um and uh and you know what Abu Dhabi is doing in general around incentivizing and enabling Innovation even for some of the smaller players uh rather than you know is a bit of a win or take all in a certain geography with certain companies but if someone sort of comes up with an idea and is able to implement and execute uh and access different markets um what what can an ecosystem provide for that continued competition uh so that so that we can continue to innovate um you know one version of the world is there a lot of concentration that continues to be in San Francisco but also um I think uh there's there's another version of the world where if we continue to De globalize uh and and we continue to prioritize sort of equity and inclusion uh with access to these Technologies and I think uh there there's a lot happening in the ecosystem here um there are interesting parts of Europe that uh that have a lot of uptake as well um and it's it's yet to be seen but I think it'll be interesting to see how that geographically disperses uh across and just going back to I think uh the horizons of innovation that we continue to think about you know when can those be applied systematically uh and commercially beyond the POC thank you so thank you very much to the panelists and it was a really interesting session where we touched a broad you know topic around uh Ai and human productivity the idea of being able to adapt use optimization um but also the fact that we are still in the very early age when it comes down to AI so thank you very much and thank you all for joining the session with us [Music]