SACHIN AGRAWAL
AI STRATEGY
With a career spanning consulting, restructuring and entrepreneurship across India, the UK and the US, today Sachin Agrawal serves as Managing Director of Zoho UK.
Having started out at Tata Group in 1996, Sachin lived through the dot-com bust while building e-marketplaces in the US, before finding himself at the centre of the 2008 financial crisis working on the Lehman Brothers restructuring across Asia. After building and taking his own SaaS specialist to exit, he joined Zoho.
More than a million companies use Zoho’ s products across 150 countries. The software giant offers a broad portfolio covering almost every functional area of a business, from CRM and customer service to finance, operations, IT and collaboration. Around 60,000 companies rely on its software in the UK. What started as a one-person
SACHIN AGRAWAL
TITLE: MANAGING DIRECTOR COMPANY: ZOHO UK INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, UK
Sachin has helped organisations realise their strategic goals, working in various industries including financial services, energy, consumer goods, manufacturing, IT and education. operation has grown to a team of 80 in the UK, which is now Zoho’ s third-largest global market. That trajectory says a lot about where European businesses are in their digital transformation journey.
Right now, Sachin’ s focus is on leading strategic growth at a moment when businesses across every sector are fundamentally rethinking how they approach AI and data privacy.
Here, he discusses the UK-India AI partnership, AI-assisted coding, growth and responsible AI.
AI-assisted coding for UK enterprises According to a recent article in Business Insider, 75 % of Google’ s new code is AI-generated. Naturally, a key topic on the agenda was how AI-assisted coding can deliver results for UK enterprises.
“ UK enterprises can move faster with AI coding,” Sachin says.“ But it’ s also raising questions and concerns around businesses’ data privacy and regulatory compliance. These tools automate repetitive tasks and speed up development, but businesses are becoming more aware of how code is generated, what data is used and where it flows.”
Sachin explains that businesses are combining AI coding tools with data governance frameworks to ensure sensitive customer data is protected. Development, however, is more straightforward with low-code platforms.
“ Low-code platforms are making development easier by allowing teams to innovate while still operating within defined compliance boundaries,” he says.
aimagazine. com 119