India’s dynamic workforce drives global investment, shifting focus from cost savings to growth and innovation: Sumeet Mathur, ServiceNow 

In this exclusive interview with Express Computer, Sumeet Mathur, Senior Vice President & Managing Director, ServiceNow India Technology & Business Center, shares insights into the company’s evolution from IT service management to a comprehensive enterprise platform. He discusses ServiceNow’s strategic role in India, the integration of generative AI to enhance productivity, and the rise of agentic AI in transforming business workflows. Mathur also highlights the factors driving India’s growing appeal for Global Capability Centres (GCCs) and the importance of unified, data-driven platforms in delivering seamless customer experiences.

Can you provide an overview of ServiceNow and its offerings?

ServiceNow was founded about 20 years ago by Fred Luddy. He observed inefficiencies in enterprise workflows and set out to create a platform to streamline operations. The company’s initial focus was on IT service management, helping organisations route and resolve issues more efficiently. Over time, ServiceNow expanded its offerings to cater to various enterprise functions, providing solutions for IT operations, HR, security, customer service, field service management, and industry-specific workflows in sectors like retail, healthcare, and finance.

ServiceNow distinguishes itself by offering an end-to-end enterprise platform, unlike competitors who focus on isolated areas like HR or CRM. Its strength lies in integrating different organisational silos—IT, HR, finance, and more—on a single platform with one data model and architecture, ensuring seamless workflows and improving productivity.

A key success factor has been the company’s early adoption of AI, particularly generative AI. ServiceNow’s acquisition of Element AI allowed it to incorporate advanced AI capabilities across its platform. The “Now Assist” generative AI product line, launched across various workflows, became a huge success, generating significant revenue within its first two quarters. By embedding AI into existing workflows, ServiceNow has been able to deliver real, practical value to customers across IT, HR, and other enterprise functions.

What is the significance of India in ServiceNow’s global ecosystem, and how does it serve as a strategic market and innovation hub for the company?

ServiceNow India plays a critical role in the company’s global ecosystem. Although ServiceNow is 20 years old globally, India celebrated its 10th anniversary and is a major hub, with about 20% of the global workforce based here. Remarkably, over 40% of ServiceNow’s product development and engineering work is carried out from India, making it a centre for innovation and technology. Hyderabad hosts the largest employee headcount globally for ServiceNow.

India is also a strategic market for the company, especially with its growing economy. The focus is on key industries such as manufacturing, banking and financial services, technology, media, and telecom. There is significant emphasis on the public sector, supported by the launch of local data centres. India also has a strong partnership ecosystem with major players like Wipro and Cognizant, which have billion-dollar collaborations with ServiceNow. India is very much central to ServiceNow’s innovation, market strategy, and global partner ecosystem.

What challenges did you face with the incorporation of GenAI, particularly regarding security and scalability?

We conducted a global survey earlier this year on our AI maturity index, examining how enterprises are incorporating generative AI. The survey revealed that companies, which we call “pace setters,” excel in five key areas: strategy, workflow, talent, governance, and investment. These companies have a top-down strategy that focuses on specific use cases, generating productivity and efficiency gains, impacting both the bottom and top lines.

Interestingly, the survey also found that while investment levels are similar among peers, the outcomes vary significantly due to better-defined strategies and use cases. Companies that invest in upskilling their workforce to leverage AI technology see greater results. For example, in customer service, generative AI tools can help agents reduce support times by summarising tickets, conducting quick investigations, and generating knowledge-based articles. This results in significant time savings—up to 30 minutes per day per agent. However, without a centralised strategy to harness these savings, the benefits might be lost.

The main challenge is moving beyond proof of concept (POC) to fully deploying and gaining ROI from generative AI. Enterprises need a dedicated focus to achieve this. At our own company, with over 25,000 globally distributed employees, we’ve tested and deployed generative AI internally across various functions like HR, IT, finance, and sales. By creating a single employee portal with self-serve AI capabilities, we’ve seen tangible cost and time savings. Our internal experiences have provided valuable insights, which we now share with our customers, ensuring technology and processes work together effectively for maximum impact.

What factors are attracting companies to invest in India, making it a lucrative market for GCCs?

India has become a lucrative market for GCCs due to several key factors. When I interact with customers in India, I generally meet three types: local and regional customers like banks and public sector companies; GCCs, where global customers have their tech operations and increasingly influence technology decisions; and our global partners who house many engineers in India serving clients worldwide.

The main trend I’ve noticed is that it’s no longer about cost savings. Instead, the focus has shifted to growth and innovation. India’s young, dynamic demographic is highly adaptable and experimental with new technologies, both in personal and professional settings. This mindset has helped organisations, including ServiceNow, stay ahead in tech and has attracted significant global investment in India for its talent, skill, and forward-thinking approach.

What is your take on agentic AI and what is ServiceNow’s plans with it?

If you look at the evolution of AI, we’ve moved from traditional machine learning, which was human-directed (like recommendation engines), to generative technologies, where AI assists humans (such as chatbots). Now, we’re entering a phase of human-AI collaboration, where both work together to solve problems, like assisting with customer issues. Agentic AI, or multi-agent systems, takes this a step further by enabling partnerships between humans and multiple AI agents. You set a series of tasks, and a master AI orchestrator assigns them to specialised AI agents. These agents perform specific tasks, and the orchestrator synthesises the results, potentially asking for human approval at key points.

A simple example would be tracking a refund. Multiple steps are involved, like determining eligibility, confirming shipment status, and checking payment policies. These tasks span across various departments like CRM, finance, and logistics. By using AI agents for each task and integrating their outputs, you get a unified outcome. However, if AI agents only operate within silos, like CRM or finance, the process becomes disconnected, leading to poor customer experience.

We recently conducted a CX survey in India and found that customers are dissatisfied because front-office operations are not connected to back-office systems. The messy middle, caused by disjointed technologies, prevents seamless customer service. AI agents present an opportunity to build digital labour, but their effectiveness depends on a platform-first approach that connects data across silos.

At ServiceNow, we launched Agentic AI tools, announced in our Q2 earnings, and recently introduced the Workflow Data Fabric in Q3. This helps AI agents access necessary data without moving it, via partnerships with Databricks and Snowflake, using zero-copy architecture.