At AI Conclave 2021, Amazon set out to put AI and ML into the hands of every customer

The expected global market size of AI/ML is $198 billion, at a CAGR of 45 percent by 2025, as per Statista. By 2022, businesses are expected to derive roughly $3.9 trillion business value from investment in AI/ML. More than 80 percent of companies today are putting AI into production in their organisation, a drastic increase from just 55 percent in 2019.

"This generation has got the front row seat to the biggest technology revolution of our lifetime," said Puneet Chandok - President, India and South Asia, Amazon Web Services as he opened the fifth edition of the Amazon AI Conclave. The event, held virtually on December 15, 2021, brought together 10,000+ enterprises, startups, developers, and data scientists to explore the limitless capabilities of Amazon’s broadest and deepest set of AI and ML services.

AWS: Solving for 'divine discontent'

Delivering the keynote, Puneet spoke about what has changed in AI/ML in the last few years, and how Amazon can help you get started on this journey. The first trend is that while AI in India is growing fast, only 21 percent of organisations have moved their AI initiatives to production, which shows the massive runway for impact in the country. Second, technology is not disrupting business, rather it is the customers and their expectations.

"In Amazon, we use the term 'divine discontent'. Yesterday's wow is today's ordinary. Customers are looking at businesses from a different lens and this is where AI comes to the rescue through hyper-personalisation," he said. And third, AI and ML is truly becoming a force for good and is solving the biggest challenges across industries.

For Amazon, helping their 10,000+ Indian customers build AI and ML is a way of staying true to their mission to empower businesses to build a better India. Puneet shared five learnings they've acquired over the years.

1) Educate and upskill all your stakeholders about AI/ML terminologies and replace fear with understanding, rather than jumping straight to the technology solution.

2) Leaders need to champion culture change. "Expect and embrace experimentation across the organisation, be tolerant of failure, and celebrate success," he said.

3) Understand how to make data more accessible, else data, on its own, is meaningless.

4) Rinse and repeat i.e., start by solving real business problems that can scale and deliver impact, rather than complicated problems.

5) Operationalise and scale by ensuring you're developing your team in the right way in both hiring and upskilling. "At Amazon, we've developed an ML University where we’ve helped 100,000+ developers get started on their ML journey," said Puneet.

A plethora of business and technical sessions

The event hosted two tracks - business and technical - to suit every participant's level of experience and job role. There were 30+ sessions covering a diverse set of topics like the biggest challenges driving the adoption of AI and ML, how to create engaging voice-first games for Alexa, how to improve business outcomes through personalisation, how investors are seizing the AI opportunity, automating motor insurance claims using Amazon Textract, empowering passengers through AI-powered travel experiences, AI for social inclusion, how to get AWS certified, among others.

Attendees also got access to 1:1 Q&A, investor connect sessions, product demos, and interesting AWS customer success stories.

Winners of Amazon AI Awards 2021

Last, but not least, the event hosted the Amazon AI Awards, to put the spotlight on innovators across the country doing ground-breaking work in AI. This year, from 33 entries, 10 winners were selected across seven categories. Solutions were judged across the five-point parameter of business viability, technology, scalability, impact, and customer experience.

The awards were presented to winners under the following categories.

1) AI for Good (startup segment)

FarmStock Technologies (Krishify App) is a farmer community app that provides farmers with a community to discuss their crop issues, seeds, and questions around agricultural equipment.

2) AI First MLC Startup of the Year (startup segment)

Attentive AI Solutions Pvt Ltd’s SaaS platform uses deep remote sensing, which is a combination of both deep learning and remote sensing, to create geospatial big data.

3) Best B2B and Best B2C Innovation Leveraging Amazon AI/ML Service (startup segment)

Growthpond Technology (Dukaan) is an easy-to-use free online store builder.

JetSynthesys is a mobile gaming, digital entertainment, and global communities company.

4) Market Disruptor of the Year (enterprise segment)

HDFC Life created an entire suite of solutions centred on the journey simplification for their customers.

5) Best Innovation Leveraging AI/ML Service (enterprise segment)

Broadridge Financial Solutions’ Proxy Policies & Insights (PPI) service provides institutional investors critical information related to shareholder meetings, and helps build customised data-driven voting guidelines.

6) Market Disruptor of the Year (DNB segment)

Swiggy is India's largest on-demand hyperlocal marketplace.

Paytm Mall app is an online and mobile marketplace and a subsidiary of One97 Communications' Paytm brand.

7) Best Innovation Leveraging AI/ML Service (DNB segment)

Paytm Mobile Solutions Pvt Ltd is India's leading financial services company that offers full-stack payments and financial solutions to consumers, offline merchants, and online platforms.

Games24x7 is India's leading gaming company with a portfolio that spans skill games and casual games.

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