On the cusp of a digital revolution

Rahul Kanodia, vice-chairman and CEO of Datamatics.

Dubai's leap towards robotics and Artificial Intelligence is finding many takers among Indian companies. One of them is Datamatics, a leading Indian technology company that is hoping to ride the digital revolution now underway in the UAE. This revolution is reshaping the way business is being done in the country. Data is at the epicenter of these changes. The core operation of Datamatics is focused on 'data to intelligence' which Dubai, with its Smart Government initiatives, could make use of, said Rahul Kanodia, Vice Chairman and CEO of the Mumbai-based global provider of consulting, Information Technology (IT) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services.
With the UAE's move away from oil and towards diversification of it's economy, the potential is enormous, said the Kanodia on a recent visit to Dubai. "Dubai and UAE are part of our geographical growth strategy. We have active engagement with several companies cutting across diverse sectors including oil, banking, transport and government operations," he said in an interview to Khaleej Times.
With the advent of new and disruptive technologies, he envisages that many of the country's new initiatives in these sectors would go digital. "This is an area where Datamatics can play a pivotal role, by supporting them in their digital transformation journey." All of this makes the company quite bullish on UAE. It already has a 25-member team based in Dubai, and Kanodia said Datamatics is leveraging the city as its Middle East headquarters for servicing customers in Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain.
The company's strength, he believes, lies in the technological edge it brings to business. It has been successfully using Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as a key enabler to help clients in their digital transformation ventures. "Our solutions use iBots, which is a family of intelligent robots to offer improved business efficiency and effectiveness by emulating human actions and decision-making processes and automating them, without making changes to the underlying systems and processes. In this process, intelligent software 'robots' (iBots) take on predictable and repeatable tasks, leading to cost reduction, while improving process quality and consistency and also enabling greater scalability.
Kanodia was upbeat about Dubai's prospects and said his company's smart processes, systems, devices and data could make the city's ambitious drive towards digital transformation complete.
Smart systems are based on a hybrid approach that combines machine learning, rules, and content analytics, he said. These systems make use of historical data and Artificial Intelligence to enable the system to auto-learn rules and then use the same for decision making. They mimic the human mind, consequently taking away the burden from humans, and accelerating the process of executing transactions.
The company, with revenues of $124.65 million, is also busy innovating with smart devices, which include smartphones, smart TV's, smart homes, connected cars, and interconnected devices (IoT), and several other areas that make up what is known in smart living. Finally, there is data, the underlying element of the earlier three components. Extracting insights from this data gives power to an organisation.
In the Middle East, Kanodia said the UAE's strength is its stable economy. It is also socially receptive to trends from across the world, and hosts 200 nationalities. There is very little impact from regional upheavals here, which is why the country has emerged as a safe investment destination for companies like Datamatics. Dubai and the UAE have made it a habit to get things done. "We see UAE as an entity that continues to invest in technology to drive business efficiency. Also, Dubai has been an early adapter of technology and we see this trend growing with time." -allan@khaleejtimes.com