AI Appreciation Day is observed on July 16 every year to recognize and appreciate the transformative impact that AI has brought to the world. At the same time, it is also incumbent on us to ensure ethical, secure, and responsible use of AI.
AI Appreciation Day 2025: Here’s what industry experts have to say:
Rob Newell, Group Vice President Solutions Consulting, Asia Pacific & Japan, New Relic
“On AI Appreciation Day, it is important to celebrate the significant progress made in recent years but also recognise that the AI race is far from over. APAC’s emerging leadership in AI adoption and investment means that AI is weaving its way into our everyday lives and systems. Organisations are using large language models (LLMs) and generative AI (genAI) to optimise operations, and AI agents promise to reshape our most common digital experiences. The value that organisations receive by augmenting human capabilities with AI are clear: there’s significant cost and productivity efficiencies that help businesses unlock new frontiers of innovation.
For organisations to integrate these AI tools and realise their potential, they will have to fundamentally rethink their technology architectures. Regardless of the size, all companies are facing the same harsh reality: AI tools are expensive to use, and the costs of building new AI-backed technologies are unpredictable. Organisations that win in our inevitable AI-enabled future won’t necessarily be the ones with the best ideas; instead, the winners will be those that have figured out how to effectively balance cost, value, and performance.
Despite the rapid evolution of generative AI technology, the fundamental questions underpinning the cost of AI are simple: How often do companies query an LLM and how much do those queries cost? By controlling these queries effectively and getting the most out of every call by adopting AI-supportive techniques such as retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and agent frameworks, companies can more reliably predict and lower their AI expenses.
Historically, observability has offered organisations the ability to detect and respond to anomalies in their systems and optimise performance. But with AI driving a revolution in processes and architectures, observability needs to evolve to keep pace and continue providing users with a window into their own systems and processes. New Relic research found that 39% of IT leaders in India regarded AI as a key driver for observability adoption.
Organisations need intelligent observability to rise and meet the challenge brought by AI. This next phase of observability will be preventive, self-healing, and autonomous, so that it can surface the right insights to the right person at the right time. AI monitoring tools give companies end-to-end visibility into their AI-integrated workflows, but more importantly real-time insight to troubleshoot, compare, and optimise approaches to using LLMs to improve their features or offer brand new experiences. This allows companies to adjust when necessary to manage costs, improve performance, and reduce common issues that can cause costly hiccups.
In the long term, AI will truly become ubiquitous when we can reliably achieve the right balance between cost, performance, quality, value, and reliability. Companies developing AI features need to identify the right use cases to get the most out of those LLMs while still delivering value and innovation to their customers.
Observability helps companies maintain reliability, quality, and efficiency throughout all components of the AI technology stack, alongside services and infrastructure, so that they have the data they need to make decisions that limit expenses, maximise ROI, and accelerate business outcomes.”- Rob Newell, Group Vice President Solutions Consulting, Asia Pacific & Japan, New Relic
Praveer Kochhar, Co-Founder & CPO, KOGO AI
AI Appreciation Day is a good moment to pause and take in just how far we’ve come. In just a few years, AI has gone from a backend tool to an ally we actively collaborate with to make decisions, solve problems, and even shape strategy. It’s changed how we work, how we think, and in many ways, how we build.
Looking ahead, the future with AI feels even more promising. It holds the power to augment human potential and help us achieve in months or weeks what once took years. And with Private AI in the picture, some of the biggest blockers, like data exposure and security, are no longer standing in the way.
That’s exactly why we built Private AI at KOGO— to help organisations leverage the power of AI without having to give up control over their data. That opens up possibilities for sectors that have traditionally kept their distance from AI, like defence, healthcare, and BFSI, where AI has always been needed but never fully trusted.
India has both the talent and the urgency to lead in this space. And as the blockers are out, people can innovate without second thoughts. When human potential moves in lockstep with AI capabilities, nothing is standing in the way. What’s ahead is a kind of innovation we haven’t yet imagined, and I believe we’re just getting started.” – Praveer Kochhar, Co-Founder & CPO, KOGO AI
Padmakumar Nair, Founder and CEO, Ennoventure, Inc.
“AI Appreciation Day is a timely recognition of how artificial intelligence has progressed from a futuristic concept to a foundational driver of transformation across industries. AI is enhancing healthcare diagnostics, streamlining supply chains, strengthening cybersecurity, enabling fraud detection, and revolutionizing how we process and engage with information. It empowers us to navigate complexity, discover meaningful insights, and make smarter decisions at scale.
At Ennoventure, we leverage AI to safeguard brand integrity through cryptographic solutions that are secure, scalable, and seamlessly integrated into product packaging. Our innovations help global brands protect authenticity and build trust with their consumers, no additional equipment required.
As AI continues to evolve, so must our commitment to ethical development and transparent use. The advancement of technology must align with human values, ensuring AI is used responsibly to support fairness, security, and inclusivity. Its true strength lies in its ability to enhance human capability, amplifying vision, accelerating action, and addressing challenges that demand precision and speed.
On AI Appreciation Day, we celebrate the ingenuity behind AI and reaffirm our responsibility to use it wisely. This is a moment to accelerate progress with purpose and shape a future where AI truly empowers the world it touches.”– Padmakumar Nair, Founder and CEO, Ennoventure, Inc.
Vineet Dhawan, CEO at DCT Inc. & dcafé digital Inc
“We must look at AI as an enabler for more responsive businesses, and not just to create smarter systems. Whether we are supporting clients through their OTT journeys or building high-performing Global Capability Centres, AI can help us make technology work with greater accuracy, adaptability, and agility.
Over the past year, we have seen AI quietly improve how decisions are made, how content is delivered, and how teams respond to changing market conditions. It must not be looked at as a standalone solution, but as one part of a larger ecosystem that blends engineering, domain insight, and execution.
This AI Appreciation Day, we at DCT, want to acknowledge the real work that goes into applying it meaningfully. AI can only take you so far on its own. It is the work our teams do every day behind the scenes that turns potential into real impact for our clients.” – Vineet Dhawan, CEO at DCT Inc. & dcafé digital Inc
Aditya Prabhu, CEO, Secutech Automations
“We view AI as a core functional layer that helps build infrastructure which is responsive, secure, and future-ready. Our systems today use AI to monitor equipment health, detect anomalies across security layers, and support decision-making at both the operator and administrative levels. Thus, making AI crucial for infrastructure to move beyond static automation and become truly responsive.
AI’s real strength lies in its ability to unify systems and enable them to work in sync. When this intelligence is embedded across the environment, it improves safety, simplifies operations, and reduces friction for all stakeholders.
In short, AI is most valuable when it helps owners, operators, and occupants experience smarter, safer environments without adding complexity. That is where its appreciation truly lies.” – Aditya Prabhu, CEO, Secutech Automations
Dr. Adnan Masood, Chief Architect – AI and Machine Learning, UST
“AI Appreciation Day celebrates unleashing human potential at scale. Generative AI has democratized creation; agentic AI is democratizing execution. The companies achieving 2.4 times higher productivity aren’t just using AI tools; they’re architecting human-AI symbiosis into their operational DNA. Ethical AI co-pilots amplify, not replace, human ingenuity. AI is turbocharging the time between idea and impact. In a world where generative AI can synthesize insights from millions of data points and agentic AI can execute multi-step workflows autonomously, the competitive advantage belongs to organizations that can encode their best human thinking into systems that never sleep, never slow down, and never forget. AI doesn’t just accelerate technology, but accelerates human potential. The future belongs to humans with AI, not AI with humans. It’s not about ethics boards preventing harm, but systems that make human judgment faster, sharper, and impactful.” –Dr. Adnan Masood, Chief Architect – AI and Machine Learning, UST
Fabio Fratucello, Field CTO World Wide, CrowdStrike
“AI is lowering the barrier to entry for adversaries, allowing them to automate social engineering, misinformation campaigns, and credential harvesting at unprecedented speed and scale. CrowdStrike’s 2025 Global Threat Report reveals adversaries are using large language models (LLMs) for sophisticated phishing and business email compromise attacks that closely replicate human behavior.
At the same time, AI is transforming organisations’ ability to detect and respond to cyber threats. Under immense pressure from rising alert volumes, faster breakout times and a persistent shortage of skilled analysts, security teams must leverage AI to protect their organisations and move from reactive response to proactive threat disruption. Automating time-consuming and repetitive tasks, agentic AI can be a force multiplier for security teams by enabling them to focus on understanding adversary behaviour, hunting advanced threats and stopping breaches before they escalate.
CrowdStrike’s Charlotte AI Agentic Detection Triage exemplifies the power and promise of AI, by autonomously validating and prioritising threats with over 98% accuracy, to save security teams up to 40 hours per week in manual alert triage. Built within a bounded autonomy framework, Charlotte AI allows organisations to define how and when automated decisions are made, giving analysts full control to set thresholds, determine when human review is required, and maintain oversight.
This combination of machine speed and human-defined guardrails empowers defenders and ensures organisations can operate at the speed of threats. Organisations should use AI Appreciation Day as a catalyst to embrace transformative AI-powered security capabilities within their security posture, which empower security teams to take back control, reduce burnout, and decisively shift the AI advantage back in their favour.”- Fabio Fratucello, Field CTO World Wide, CrowdStrike.
Nick Magnuson, Head of AI, Qlik
“At Qlik, we believe that AI’s promise in India lies not just in innovation, but in impact. As agentic AI takes root across key sectors like public services, healthcare and financial inclusion, we’re seeing real transformation not just headlines. These AI systems are helping reduce response times, improve access, lower costs, and enable smarter decision-making at scale. But the foundation for this success is clear: quality data, trust, governance and purpose. India’s forward-thinking approach to digital infrastructure and data diversity offers a strong base for agentic AI to thrive. While AI Appreciation Day may be peculiar to some, we’d like to celebrate how India is evolving into a trusted steward for AI, helping leaders across the country drive progress, with people at the center.” Nick Magnuson, Head of AI, Qlik
Rahul S Kurkure, Founder and Director of Cloud.in
At Cloud.in, we don’t just look at AI as a tool — we see it as a force that’s reshaping the way businesses think, operate, and innovate. With GenAI revolutionizing creativity and interaction, and Agentic AI stepping in as autonomous decision-makers, the cloud has gone beyond infrastructure — it’s now the launchpad for intelligence. On AI Appreciation Day, we celebrate how far we’ve come, and more importantly, where we’re heading.” – Rahul S Kurkure, Founder and Director of Cloud.in
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Chetan Jain, Founding Executive Director, and Managing Director, Inspira Enterprise
At Inspira Enterprise, we celebrate the endless possibilities and opportunities presented by AI and generative AI (GenAI), on this AI Appreciation Day. This technology continues to empower our cybersecurity defenses by enhancing the Security efficiency in across threat detection, mitigation, and response, in addition to anomaly detection. GenAI enables real-time threat simulation and threat modeling for testing and improving security systems as well. However, it is important to note that while GenAI is a valuable tool for cybersecurity, it is also being used maliciously by cybercriminals to launch sophisticated cyberattacks. Organizations have to utilize an robust AI governance framework and implement robust security solutions to address threats posed by GenAI, while establishing digital trust to enable a safer and smarter future.
Bhawna Singh, CTO, Auth0, Okta
“AI is transforming how we think about scale, security, and simplicity. It enables us to solve complex challenges faster while pushing us to stay intentional about ethics, transparency, and trust. On AI Appreciation Day, we celebrate progress, but more importantly, we reaffirm our commitment to building AI that’s responsible, resilient, and built for everyone.“- Bhawna Singh, CTO, Auth0, Okta
Sumit Srivastava, Solutions Engineering Director – India at CyberArk
“India is witnessing a significant surge in AI adoption, cloud-native application development, and digital transformation across enterprises, government, and even startups. As a result, machine identities are growing at an unprecedented rate, far outpacing human identities. According to the CyberArk 2025 Identity Security Landscape report, organizations today have 82 machine identities for every human identity, and this number is expected to keep rising with the proliferation of agentic AI.
This trend presents a critical cybersecurity challenge. Autonomous AI agents, while powerful, can independently make decisions, escalate their access privileges, and interact with critical IT systems, often without direct human oversight. Left unsecured, they can be exploited by threat actors to gain lateral access across networks, including sensitive data and infrastructure.
For Indian enterprises, especially those in BFSI, manufacturing, and government sectors undergoing rapid digitization, the top priority must be implementing a unified, AI-powered identity security framework, starting with robust machine identity protection. CyberArk strongly believes that industry, academia, and government must come together to proactively define secure AI usage frameworks before bad actors can exploit the gap.
Human and machine identities are the backbone of India’s growing digital economy. On AI Appreciation Day, it’s vital to recognize that securing these identities isn’t just a technical necessity, it is foundational to ensuring safe, trustworthy AI innovation in India’s digital future.”– Sumit Srivastava, Solutions Engineering Director – India at CyberArk.
Vishal Ghariwala, APAC CTO, SUSE
“Over the last ten years, Indian businesses have really embraced new tech, and AI is no different. India’s becoming a global hotspot for AI talent and has a booming startup scene, so it’s not just adopting AI, but actively shaping its future. With efforts like the IndiaAI Mission and the rise of fast-scaling local AI startups, it’s critical to build on open infrastructure that can scale, offer flexible models, and be compliance-ready from day one.
That said, today’s AI breakthroughs will be tomorrow’s legacy. Getting locked in or stuck in one ecosystem is counter-intuitive to innovation. Meanwhile, APAC’s businesses are leapfrogging other markets at a rapid pace. Businesses, therefore, need to be prepared and think ahead about how to make use of best-in-class technologies, while maintaining the flexibility to move between different stacks and solutions.
Open source principles – collaborative improvements, knowledge pooling, transparency – will be key to AI’s future health. Open development speeds up innovation and invites greater participation from the wider developer ecosystem, whether that’s a hobbyist at home, through to IT leaders pulling from the same source repository for some of India’s largest enterprises. AI has the power to boost human potential, crank up productivity, tackle tough challenges, and spark new creative ideas. Genuine open source means lowering the barriers to access and working together to innovate, and that’s the kind of environment we should all be aiming to build, including in AI.
Building with agility and long-term flexibility in mind helps organizations from getting stuck, and in turn builds resiliency and ability to innovate as new breakthroughs emerge. With open source, businesses can innovate securely, transparently, and on their own terms.
So, on AI Appreciation Day, we’re not just celebrating what AI can do, but how we choose to build it. As it becomes more and more part of our daily lives, it’s our shared responsibility to guide its development for the benefit of everyone.”
Rahul Jha, VP of Cloud, GenAi & Cybersecurity at Visionet Systems
“On this AI Appreciation Day, we celebrate not only the progress AI has unlocked, but also the future we’re shaping through it.
Through our in-house platforms like GenAI Studio and AgentVerse, we’re enabling scalable, secure, and high-impact adoption of AI and empowering businesses to build and deploy intelligent agents, enterprise copilots, and automation frameworks tailored to real-world needs.
Internally, our AI Now campaign is a movement to embed AI into how we work, think, and grow. From hands-on training and dedicated AI workspaces to the launch of our internal companion SPARK, we’re enabling every team member to build confidence, skills, and shared momentum in the age of intelligence.”
Mitesh Jain, Regional Vice President – India, Akamai Technologies
“Artificial Intelligence is transforming industries, driving innovation, and shaping how we live and work. From personalized digital experiences to real-time insights, AI is helping organizations reimagine what is possible. However, as AI adoption grows, so do the challenges of securing applications, protecting data, and ensuring consistent performance. The future of AI depends not only on the pace of innovation but also on building strong cybersecurity foundations and resilient cloud infrastructure that enable safe, scalable, and trustworthy AI-driven solutions.
To help businesses realize this potential, it is essential to ensure that AI applications are protected, high-performing, and built for scale. Akamai’s intelligent cloud platform, combined with advanced security solutions such as Firewall for AI, App and API Protector, and edge-powered inference capabilities, empowers enterprises to adopt AI with confidence. As we mark AI Appreciation Day, we remain committed to pushing the boundaries of what AI can make possible helping organizations deliver secure, reliable, and seamless digital experiences.” – Mitesh Jain, Regional Vice President – India, Akamai Technologies
Ranga Jagannath, Senior Director – Growth, Agora
“AI is more than just automation — it is a bridge to deeper human connection. We believe real-time interactions should be intelligent, inclusive, and truly human-centred. Our innovations — like the Conversational AI Engine and the ConvoAI Device Kit — help organizations create seamless voice and video experiences across devices, from phones to wearables.
With ultra-low latency, real-time translation, noise cancellation, intelligent interruption handling, and multi-lingual support, we are not just removing technical barriers — we are making conversations more accessible, empathetic, and meaningful.
Whether it is an AI companion offering emotional support or a virtual assistant helping students learn beyond the classroom, we see AI as a force that connects — not replaces. At Agora, we are proud to shape a future where AI does not just improve communication — it amplifies understanding.”
Vasanthi Ramesh, VP- Engineering and Managing Director, NetApp India
“On AI Appreciation Day, it’s essential to reflect on the transformative role AI continues to play across industries worldwide. With data volumes now far outpacing our human ability to process and respond, AI isn’t just valuable, it’s essential. With the rise of open large language models (LLMs), businesses are navigating an increasingly competitive global landscape for AI leadership. NetApp’s AI Space Race report reveals that this momentum is shared across geographies: 81% of CEO’s and IT executives surveyed highlighted that they are currently piloting or scaling AI initiatives, and 88% believe their organizations are mostly or fully prepared to sustain long-term AI transformation. That said, winning the AI race will require intelligent data strategies and robust infrastructures – supported by agile, secure, and scalable cloud solutions. Regardless of industry, size, or geography, organizations must invest in resilient infrastructure that enables real innovation. Because in the AI Space Race, success will be defined by the ability to turn data into lasting competitive advantage.” – Vasanthi Ramesh, VP- Engineering and Managing Director, NetApp India
