'Young India to pave way for RPA adoption'

US-based developer of robotic process automation (RPA) software, Automation Anywhere, is eyeing young untapped skilled Indians as new additions to their workforce.

Automation Anywhere, a platform provider for RPA, is looking forward to increasing its headcount to 3000 employees by next year from a current headcount of around 1000 with about 300 bots working alongside the new recruits in addition to the 100 bots currently. "We like to follow a one is to ten ratio when it comes to the workforce," said Mihir Shukla, CEO, Automation Anywhere.

Adding to this, Shukla also explained how India has suitable skilled and untapped labour force ideal for the emerging RPA based software developing and thus the company plans for most of these new positions to be created in India.

“India has the skill of running the processes of the world, the tech expertise and a large pool of skilled people. We have software engineers and cognitive engineers in three large development centres: two in India and one in San Jose in the US.,” said Shukla in a briefing.

The company believes that jobs are to significantly increase over the years as more and more bots are introduced in various workforces as usage of bots will free employees from repetitive work and let the human element alone for employees to tackle with.

"What really drives a firm now are two things: cost efficiency and instant gratification. Bots help reduce recurring lags and ease processes and thus contributing to instant customer gratification," said Shukla.

"When recurring functions are automated within the organization, then employees can focus on so many creative and strategic issues and opportunities. It’s perhaps why augmented organizations outperform non-augmented enterprises and have more ‘human’ workplaces.” said Shukla in a statement.

As a part of research conducted by Goldsmiths University, London with Automation Anywhere it was found out that 71% of all the Indian respondents surveyed said that their employees used RPA and AI-based augmentation to its full potential, the highest proportion for any of the four markets surveyed.

The company has invested in training partners all across the globe to help hone the skills needed of employees for this emerging tech. “We are working with 68 universities and colleges and in the process of talking to another 140 of them worldwide,” he added.

Earlier in July, the company completed its Series A financing round of $250 million which was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity with participation from General Atlantic and World Innovation Lab (WiL). This was one of the largest Series A rounds on record for an enterprise software company and took its post-money valuation to $1.8 billion.