I recently attended the 9th edition of the AWS AI Conclave in Bengaluru, one of India's largest AI and cloud leadership events. The conclave brought together leaders from AWS, BFSI, consumer tech, healthcare, and platform companies for a full-day deep dive into how enterprises are actually building, deploying, and scaling AI systems in production.
This wasn't about GenAI demos or proof-of-concepts. It was about execution at scale.
The opening keynote by Sandeep Dutta (President, AWS India & South Asia) set a powerful foundation:
"The success of India lies in the democratization of AI — enabling everyone to create and use AI."
This idea echoed across every session, use case, and architectural decision discussed throughout the day.
From Chatbots to Agents: The Shift That Matters
One of the clearest themes of the conclave was the transition from chatbots to agentic AI.
As Ganapathy Krishnamoorthy (VP & GM, AWS) explained it succinctly:
Chatbots respond. Agents act.
Agentic systems can:
- Query enterprise systems
- Detect anomalies and failures
- Pull analytics and insights
- Recommend or execute actions autonomously
But this shift is only possible with the right foundations in place:
- AI infrastructure (Trainium, EC2, Ultra servers)
- Inference platforms (Amazon Bedrock, Nova models)
- Strong data layers
- Tooling that reduces complexity from notebook to production
The philosophy driving this shift was captured in one line:
BUILDING AT THE SPEED OF AN IDEA.
Enterprise AI: Where Trust Meets Scale
In highly regulated industries like BFSI and healthcare, AI adoption comes with a non-negotiable requirement: trust.
Bhavnish Lathia (CTO, Kotak Mahindra Bank) shared real-world GenAI use cases across customer operations, compliance, and engineering — anchored by a powerful truth:
TRUST IS THE PRODUCT THAT IS SOLD.
Similarly, Srikanth Rama Subramanian (SVP — Technology, Axis Bank) highlighted how GenAI is already driving:
- Improved customer experience
- Operational efficiency and Opex reduction
- Risk and compliance automation
- Revenue enhancement
All while fostering a culture of:
BUILDING FAST. FAILING FAST. SCALING FAST.
Data, Context, and Competitive Advantage
Across sessions, one idea surfaced repeatedly:
YOUR AGENT IS AS GOOD AS YOUR DATA.
From Postman's data agents (Prudhvi Vasa) to Innovaccer's healthcare AI platforms (Nilav Ghosh), the message was consistent — AI systems create value only when intelligence is paired with context.
As Rama Thamman (AWS) summarized it perfectly:
INTELLIGENCE + CONTEXT = COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE.
Agentic AI Beyond Today: The Global Perspective
Alessandro Cerè (AI Leader, AWS) offered a global view on where agentic AI is headed next — moving beyond isolated task execution toward composable, orchestrated, and context-aware systems.
A key theme from his session was that the future of GenAI will not be defined by model size alone, but by how agents reason, collaborate, and operate safely within enterprise workflows.
The differentiation, he noted, will come from guardrails, orchestration layers, and deep system integration — turning intelligence into something organizations can trust and scale.
The Agentic AI Future Is Already Here
The closing session by Praveen Jayakumar (Head of Generative & Agentic AI, Asia-PacJ, AWS) looked ahead to frontier agents, autonomous systems, and AI deeply embedded into platforms, databases, and workflows.
This wasn't speculation about the future. It was a reflection of what is already being built today.
Ending on a Human Note
The conclave concluded with a refreshing reminder that technology ultimately serves people — through a conversation led by Karishma Mehta (Founder and CEO — Humans of Bombay), followed by insights from Dinesh Karthik, Dr. Paul Hawkins OBE, and Joy Bhattacharjya.
A fitting close to a day that balanced technology, leadership, and humanity.
Final Reflection
One thing is clear:
AI in India has moved beyond experimentation. We are firmly in the era of execution, scale, and real business outcomes.
And the agentic future?
We're already building it.