Go First situation ‘painful’; muted hopes for a tailwind
“Myntra has created a fashion assistant to help customers buy things much easier. Zomato has created an AI assistant to give you more precise recommendations. Axis Bank, one of the fastest growing Copilot adopters, is seeing 30% productivity improvement,” he said. Microsoft’s India operations have grown over time. As of FY23, its latest available finances are at $2.26 billion—up 39% year-onyear. Its services segment, which includes its Azure Cloud and OpenAI, accounted for 70%, or $1.58 billion out of its revenue. In cloud operations, market data estimated Azure to account for just over 20% of India’s hyperscaler cloud providers. Now, analysts expect Microsoft to have grown at an even faster pace in FY24. “The generative AI fillip has further helped Microsoft cash in on the need to adopt AI-ready platforms—its market share and revenue is also likely to have ramped up as a result. With increasing clients, Microsoft’s share of revenue earned from India could also increase, as its growth pace ramps up beyond what it saw in FY23,” a senior industry analyst at a Gurgaon-headquartered market research firm told on condition of anonymity.
Ramping up the India revenue share would also be a key part of the company’s overall agenda— though Chandok said that India’s importance is also strategic, and not just financial. As of FY23, India accounted for just over 1% of Microsoft’s $211 billion in annual revenue. The company has a July to June financial year.
As its business ramps up, Chandok said that the software major is seeing an uptake of off-the-shelf Copilot solutions, OpenAI-based use cases specific to sectoral needs, and use of AI infrastructure for startups. This, in turn, is translating into business growth as well as revenues. “India’s got 13.2 million developers on Github Copilot, the second largest in the world, and productivity is up 55%,” he noted.
As part of the strategic focus, Microsoft is partnering with governments and government agencies to train officials in use of generative AI to increase productivity and enable skilling on AI. “Lots of conversations are taking place with state governments about solving problems around use cases around law and order, and citizen services,” Chandok said.
Interestingly, the nature of projects between government departments and private sector boardrooms are similar. “The three questions that I get from most are: demystifying the technology beyond AI washing, what it can do for us, and how we can work with it. The needs are the same, the nature of execution is all that will differ,” he added.
The massive push on AI would also need compute power on the backend, Chandok said, which is why the tech giant is expanding its data centres here.
The development of edge AI capabilities has been rising. Beyond Microsoft, Meta unveiled its Llama-3 with as little as 8 billion data parameters in its training. For context, large AI models as of today are typically over 200 billion parameters, and go up to 2-3 trillion parameters in size. Others, such as Salesforce, have also built purpose-driven models that could target specific use cases—the latter’s Slack office communications tool.
“Such development will likely develop more over time—our goal is to be present in all innovation circles,” Chandok said.
Last May, it all started with flight suspension for just three days and “an unfortunate decision” of voluntary insolvency resolution option taken to protect the airline’s interests.
A year down the line, the now plane-less Go First’s fate remains uncertain and come June, there are revival expectations, though muted, when the extended deadline for the resolution process ends.
There are concerns that the airline might even be pushed into liquidation, experts opined.
“It is extremely painful to see that even after one year, the airline has not been able to revive the operations,” the budget carrier’s former chief Kaushik Khona told PTI.
Since 3 May 2023, Go First has not taken to the skies, with its blue and white livery A320 planes gathering dust at airports, most staff leaving and many staring at uncertain times, and a resolution process still remaining on the tarmac.
Hopes of a quick revival further faded, as the carrier’s 54 planes have been deregistered after protracted legal battles and lessors will be taking away the aircraft.
The contrails of the Go First insolvency process also left trails of concerns not only about the grounded airline’s trajectory but also about the rights of lessors provided under the Cape Town Convention.
Khona, who was at the helm when the more than 17-yearold airline filed for the voluntary insolvency resolution proceedings, said the staff were optimistic that operations could be resumed from August 2023.
“The loss of a good, customer friendly airline which always offered affordable fares and which treated all its customers with the best comfortable journey on its youngest fleet has been a huge loss for all the customers... The revival was always possible and I hope people who are at the helm do it even now,” he said.
The revival looks difficult but the airline has a lot of value left, according to industry sources.
Among others, the airline had made a pre-delivery payment of around $200 million to Airbus towards its second order for 72 planes. The first order by the carrier was for 72 aircraft, they added.
70% Contribution of services segment to its revenue
Hopes of quick revival faded as 54 planes of the carrier were deregistered after protracted legal battles