Dell to focus on AI factories, GenAI services to flourish in India

The computer company plans to embed AI in its products and services and provide “optimal infrastructure” to host AI workloads, including the Dell AI Factory in partnership with Nvidia, Alok Ohrie, president and managing director of Dell Technologies India, said in an interview.

Ohrie said OpenAI’s ChatGPT “opened everyone’s mind to start thinking about GenAI as a companion, a helper, a partner, rather than a technology that’s going to take away jobs.”

But he acknowledged that GenAI could be a double-edged sword, disrupting existing systems while transforming both business and society. According to Ohrie, many companies are struggling to implement GenAI due to a lack of skilled talent and difficulty processing data from different sources.

He cited a Dell study that said: “About 95% of enterprises want to adopt GenAI, but 52% don’t know where to start.”

GenAI is increasingly being used to automate repetitive tasks that require decision-making beyond the capabilities of conventional AI, particularly in the financial sector for fraud detection and screening requests for proposals (RFPs) for major projects.

Ohrie noted that it is also gaining popularity for content creation, HR lookups and code generation, allowing individuals to focus on higher-value, more meaningful work. “We are implementing a lot of POCs (proofs of concepts),” he added. “But there is no ready-made talent pool.”

Helping businesses

Ohrie acknowledged that hallucinations, integrity, and governance in GenAI models remain significant issues. Hallucinations are when an AI model produces incorrect or misleading results. But he stressed that while some base models come with large libraries of large language models (LLMs), some companies are willing to take the risk.

He added: “One of our ecosystem partners, Singapore-based H2O.ai, provides assurance that their models will not produce inconsistent or disruptive responses if used within certain parameters.”

Ohrie said Dell AI Factory can also support enterprises in their development of AI. The solution integrates Dell’s infrastructure with Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) and AI capabilities, and also provides GenAI solutions for digital assistants to help organizations develop advanced AI-driven conversational experiences.

Ohrie added that many companies do not need to run LLMs and can instead use small language models (SLMs) to train their data, which can be deployed on high-end laptops and workstations such as “Dell’s Co-pilot+ AI PCs—XPS 13 and Inspiron 14 Plus, which were launched in India in June this year and are being adopted eagerly by IT-ITeS companies.”

Sanchit Vir Gogia, founder and CEO of Greyhound Research, said Dell’s AI Factory partnership with Nvidia is a good use of Dell’s hardware expertise and Nvidia’s GPUs and AI software. However, he added that the “AI on device” opportunity will emerge soon and the winner will be whoever can use AI on the device in the most energy-efficient and ethical way.

Gogia added that, unlike its peers, Dell is still a founder-managed company that is now passionate about artificial intelligence.

“Michael Dell has boldly taken companies private in the past to restructure the Dell, EMC and VMware portfolios and better prepare to seize new market opportunities. With that precedent, it’s hard to imagine Michael Dell won’t make bold moves again to make his mark in AI,” he said.

Ohrie said the next five years will be a critical period for building AI skills in India and he expects Dell to play a key role in this transformation. He stressed that as India strengthens platforms such as Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), Digilocker and Healthstack, while building new platforms such as Agri Stack, the need for strong IT infrastructure will only increase.

Oli stressed that while India is growing at a “spectacular pace” and rapidly deploying platforms and applications, the country’s IT infrastructure and spending still lags behind countries such as Japan, whose GDP may soon surpass India’s.

But “India’s spending on IT and products and services was 0.18% of GDP last year, far behind Japan’s 0.35% during the same period. India must bridge this gap to achieve its goal of becoming a $5 trillion economy,” he said.