CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Santosh Bijur, VP, India Development Center, AT&T
Give us an overview on AT&T in India? What is the size of your operations and the talent strength in India?
AT&T has over 148,000 dedicated professionals globally. We cater to the needs of nearly 2.5 million businesses, pioneering connections, service, and business growth for close to 150 years. AT&T began its close relationship with India over 40 years ago when it became the first foreign telecom operator in India to secure International Long Distance (ILD)/ National Long Distance (NLD) licenses to serve Global & India-headquartered companies. Today, our teams in India are working on providing connectivity services, managed services, global business solutions, and hosting and application services. For India, we are focused on building a talented, diverse, and inclusive technology team that works with the latest technologies and helps us expand our capabilities. Overall, India headcount is over 3300 of which 1,800 plus are a part of the India Development Center.
How do you see this growing? Any plans for both short-term and long-term?
As we have highlighted globally, we are working towards bringing in AI-driven efficiencies in the business which will contribute towards our savings targets of $2B by mid-2026. Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) support, Climate & fraud will be our major AI focus areas in 2024. We work across four verticals in India – Tech Risk, Cyber Ops, IAM & Application Security and we aim at deepening our capabilities across these areas. As far as India is concerned, we expect an addition of 1000-2000 employees in the next 2 years.
What kind of solutions are being worked upon in India? What is the significance of the talent here?
The India center is a part of our overall talent strategy. We have representation from all of AT&T’s global teams here in India. The teams in Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Chennai are doing core work on GenAI, and traditional AI/ML models. The India center contributes to developing new technologies and solutions, particularly in areas such as software development, network optimization, and next-generation technologies. This center is involved in fostering innovation within AT&T. Their efforts include exploring emerging technologies, conducting pilot projects, and developing proofs of concepts that can potentially be scaled globally. The talent in India offers AT&T strategic advantages due to world-class quality, availability, and scalability.
From a top-level perspective, how is AT&T leveraging tech to further advance the telecom landscape? How is India center contributing to this?
More than 2.5 million businesses turn to AT&T for its services. We work in all major industries, including financial services, manufacturing, education, healthcare, retail, hospitality and government. AT&T has a significant presence in the India region and is uniquely positioned to deliver the service required by today’s enterprises, with multiple AT&T-owned nodes and Network to Network Interconnect (NNI) partners across India, including providing deep country-wide coverage from tier-1 to tier-3 cities. Going forward, AT&T will be building significant cybersecurity capability in India as part of the company’s focus on safeguarding its data and networks. The India Development Center is using Ask AT&T (AT&T’s Gen AI version), data science and a host of dev ops & full stack development technologies to achieve enhanced digital/retail customer satisfaction, expand Broadband footprint and product differentiation, offer converged telecom offerings and deliver emerging products and 5G monetization experiences.
In terms of talent, what’s the projection?
As mentioned earlier, we look to hire 1000–2000 employees in the next 2 years in India. This will be across lateral positions and campus hires.
What kind of skills are you looking at and how are you upskilling your existing workforce, especially after AI comes into picture?
Frequently Hired Skills for IDC: AT&T focuses on several key skills that are frequently in demand: Devops/SRE, Java Full Stack, Java Microservices, QA Automation, Data Scientist, Data Engineering, Application Architect, Salesforce, Cloud Engineers – Azure, ServiceNow, Product Owner, Business Analyst, Cyber Security, Production/Application Support, MuleSoft.
AI Streams:
- AT&T offers specialized training in AI-related areas:
- Databricks Trainings: Leveraging Databricks for big data analytics and machine learning.
- GenAI Training: Upskilling employees in Generative AI, which automates content creation.
- ML Ops Training: Focusing on deploying and managing machine learning models in production.
Prompt Engineering and Generative AI: AT&T recognizes the transformative potential of Generative AI (GenAI). Employees can benefit from prompt engineering, which guides Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Copilot toward desired outputs.
In-House Capabilities:
- AT&T has developed in-house capabilities to design and implement applications powered by GenAI.
- The new tool, Ask AT&T, uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT functionality, making employees more effective, efficient, and creative in their roles.
Additional Learning: Beyond specialized courses, AT&T employees can explore Udemy and Coursera for Data Science training.
The post AT&T’s Strategic Expansion and Innovation in India: An Overview of Operations, Talent Growth, and Technological Advancements appeared first on CXOToday.com.