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Rakuten India, in close association with Analytics India Magazine, recently hosted the third edition of the Rakuten Product Conference (RPC) 2023. The event centred around ‘Generative AI and the Future of Cloud’ attracted a whopping 6,300 participants from different parts of the world, echoing the global significance of the rapidly evolving technology.
The conference spanned two days, delving into the vast potential of Generative AI and Cloud Computing.
Embracing Generative AI
Day one commenced on an exhilarating note on Generative AI by Sunil Gopinath, CEO of Rakuten India. Following him, Yasufumi Hirai, Ting Cai, Taku Okoshi, and Nakane Tsutomu, the Consul General of Japan in Bengaluru, and other esteemed figures within the Rakuten Group and from the industry, shared the platform to deliver their insightful keynotes.
Emphasising the need to put people at the centre of technology, Yasufumi Hirai, Group Executive Vice President and CISO of Rakuten Group said “Many tech engineers start their sentences with technology as the subject. But the subject of any sentence should be people; society; the world; organisations; family – technology can be the enabler to realise something amazing.”
Diving into the world of Generative AI, several key personalities addressed the audience, leaving them with much food for thought. Ankush Sabharwal, CEO at CoRover presented the fascinating topic of BharatGPT, a large language model that supports multiple languages and exemplifies the transformative power of AI. Nischal Nadhamuni, Founder & CTO at Klarity furthered the conversation by discussing the utilisation of Generative AI to automate complex finance and accounting workflows.
“We want to leverage AI to synthesise and generate information efficiently. But creativity, emotion, the empathy, is what human beings are uniquely good at. We hope to leverage AI to augment human creativity and unleash infinite possibilities,” said Ting Cai, Senior Managing Executive Officer and CDO, Rakuten Group.
Dr. Nanda Kambhatla, Sr. Director at Adobe Research India explored the implications of Generative AI for creators and communicators, outlining its potential to reshape the landscape of content generation and communication. Vishwesh Pai, Sr. Director of Product, AI Platform, ServiceNow on the other hand, addressed the challenges and benefits of creating generative AI-based experiences specifically for enterprise customers, a pressing topic given the increasing adoption of AI in business processes.
“As a machine learning (ML) researcher, the game has changed. It used to be that ML meant that for every task you want to do, you collect some data, train a model on it, fine tune it and deploy it for inference. But now, we have foundation models, which are mammoth models. This is becoming the new way of doing AI.” said Kambhatla highlighting the potential of generative AI for all.
The day’s events were neatly wrapped up with a comprehensive panel discussion on ‘Chat GPT/Large Language Models.’ The session was a robust exploration of the present landscape, potential, and associated challenges of these models in the organisational context.
The Future is in the Cloud
Day two focused on the future of cloud technology, with insightful presentations by Tsubasa Shiraishi, Vice Chairman of Rakuten India. His opening remarks were followed by compelling keynotes from Rakuten Group’s Akihito Kurozumi and Rohit Dewan, and Fergal Downey from Rakuten Marketing Europe Limited.
Industry stalwarts including Rajat Pandit from Google, Partha Seetala from Rakuten Symphony, Dr. Rahul Ghodke from CGI, and Nitin Mishra from ONDC, took to the stage to share their knowledge and insights on the future of cloud technology. Lory Kehoe, the founder of Blockchain Ireland, offered an unconventional perspective on entrepreneurial ecosystems, elucidating the birth and evolution of such systems.
In a talk that was particularly relevant to India’s rapidly expanding e-commerce sector, Sandeep Kohli, Vice President of Engineering at Flipkart, outlined how next-generation multi-cloud is driving a revolution in e-commerce, fundamentally enhancing customer experiences.
Kirthi Ganapathy, Specialist Customer Engineering Leader of Google Cloud India, touched on the important topic of ethics in AI, explaining that “in a time when the gap between left and right, liberal and secular is seemingly widening, where gender equity and biases are being stretched, responsible AI needs to ensure that it walks within the line in order to maintain neutrality in all aspects.”
The panel discussion that followed was both informative and invigorating. The attendees were provided with a comprehensive understanding of how cloud technology is set to disrupt businesses in the future. Nalini George, Chief People Officer of Rakuten India, closed the session and the conference with a vote of thanks. Her closing remarks underscored the conviction that cloud technology will continue to shape our future, resonating strongly with the audience.
Impact of the Conference
RPC 2023 was a melting pot of disruptive ideas. It offered a platform that spurred discussions on the limitless potential and imminent challenges in the field of Generative AI and Cloud Computing. Rakuten India, with its dedicated centres of excellence, showcased its leadership and commitment towards fostering a technology-forward environment, pushing the boundaries of mobile application development, data analytics, engineering, DevOps, and information security.
The event was also a conduit for networking, enabling attendees to connect with a broad spectrum of professionals – data artists, innovators, and researchers driving AI strategies in their organisations. This exchange opened doors for potential collaborations and long-lasting relationships within the industry, thus reinforcing the community’s collective progress towards a future shaped by Generative AI and Cloud Computing.
