Is AI a threat to your job? Info Edge founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani answers, shares an advice for young professionals
Amid industry-wide fears that artificial intelligence (AI) will replace human roles, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder and Executive Vice Chairman of Info Edge, the company that owns Naukri.com, addressed these concerns on Monday, 16 February.
Bikhchandani assured that AI will not eliminate jobs but will significantly enhance productivity. He urged young professionals to adopt AI tools or risk being left behind.
Addressing the “Future of Employability and AI” session of the AI Impact Summit 2026, Bikhchandani said that AI is now primarily used to enhance efficiency and access new market segments that were previously unviable, rather than to replace human employees.
What role will AI play in a company?
Citing a business example, he explained that companies often see it as financially unfeasible to assign employees to handle thousands of low-paying clients. Nonetheless, AI-driven voice bots can now effectively manage such outreach, allowing firms to serve this underserved segment without hiring additional staff.
“You can sit in office and you can make phone calls; now the bottom 5,100 clients who really don’t pay that much, it doesn’t make financial sense to have a person holding them and calling on them, it doesn’t make financial sense for a person who and for India, so we put a chatbot. A voice bot automatically calls, you can’t make out it’s not a human being, that’s how it’s advanced, right, and suddenly we are calling them up,” ANI quoted Bikhchandani as saying.
“Now what is happening here is stuff that is not getting done, we have served an underserved segment, an underserved market by using AI. Thus nobody is thrown out of a company because of AI, I don’t want that happening going forward, but right now, it’s being used to increase productivity, it is being used to do stuff better,” he said.
Advice for young professionals
Bikhchandani suggested that young professionals should focus on developing practical AI skills relevant to their careers instead of worrying about broader policy debates or the development of large language models (LLMs).
“How AI is like that. You don’t have to build LLMs, right, and I tell you what to all the young people here, you don’t worry about system problems, you don’t worry about policy issues, you just worry about your job here and your career, your individual career,” he said.
“What should you do, what should you do to make sure AI doesn’t make you lose your job, and AI enables you to get your turn? Just learn 5, 10, 15 useful AI tools. Let me assure you, the older people in any company would not know that, because they are not quick learners, but if you learn them right, you will get your now,” Bikhchandani added.
Former HCL Technologies CEO Vineet Nayyar, however, said that AI would impact 50% of jobs, while also creating more than 50% new employment opportunities.
The AI Impact Summit, which started on Monday in New Delhi, hosts world leaders from over 20 countries, including French President Emmanuel Macron, Brazilian President Lula da Silva, and Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will also participate in the event.
Post Comment