Ankur Kothari on Automation Anywhere’s Global Expansion and Agentic AI Growth

Hey everyone. Welcome back here to our coverage of Automation Anywhere. We're in Dallas, and this is our last interview of the day, unfortunately.

But in many ways, we saved the best for last. Let me introduce you to Ankur Kothari. Ankur is the chief operating officer and one of the co-founders.

How do you separate the reality from the hype of what we're seeing here? It's never as good as it says, but it's never as bad as they say either. What do you think?

I think, in last one or two years, the unprecedented amount of the pace of innovation, what that has done is it has made market very noisy. Yeah. And when I look at it, I talk to leaders around the world in my role, and everyone is looking to separate the signal from the noise.

In all those conversation, the leaders are saying that there's a common pattern that is emerging. And that pattern is that while the excitement for agentic AI and AI is real, but so is the exhaustion. Right.

The exhaustion of learning new language, new pace. And the thing everyone has acknowledged is that because they have understood that AI is not just for to answering questions, it can actually allow you to execute work. Mm-hmm.

Now, that opens up a very different, and when you said generative AI to agentic AI- Right. That's a big difference ... that's the big difference.

Yeah. From just answering questions to actually doing work. " So I think that that level of shift that is happening, that you are seeing, that pace of innovation is causing this level of noisy market.

Mm-hmm. And while the excitement is good, people are looking to say how to separate from what is cool to what will actually change how my business will operate. Yep.

So one of the things I'm hearing, because I also talk to a lot of people, is that there's no end to pilot- Yeah ... that we're doing. We're doing all these different pilots, different agents, different outcomes.

It's making the move from a pilot to production- Yes ... if you will, where people are not stumbling, but a lot of the pilots are just not- Yep ... making that leap.

Is that just a focus of being early? You think that'll get better, or is that just par for the course? I think what is happening is that a technology that can have this kind of an impact, and everyone knows the impact is big, people are trying to figure out, how do I capitalize that and create some kind of an advantage?

Now, pilots, everyone has a different risk capacity moment. Mm-hmm. Right?

Some people may move only when they know everything 100% is true. Some people will move if 70 to 80% is true. Now, if you wait for 100% to be true, you are by definition late because someone is moving faster.

Yeah. So I think the pilots became, it started with experiments and pilots well, but I keep talking to leaders, and we discuss that, look, forget technology. What are the outcomes you are after?

Now, that outcome, how you get there, whether pilot or a real production thing, focus on outcomes, not the tech. And that is needed. So we are looking at that, and there is a clear trend where our customers are saying, "We want to go into production.

" Because you don't want small incremental gains. You want some clear impacts that you can take it to your board. First time, a technology is so transformative that it gets discussed in every boardroom as well as in every kitchen table.

And every leadership is asking. So this is the time you have attention of the leadership. Why go with small gains?

Why not go with one or two really big movements? So that is the movement that is happening. One year ago, people were new at agentic.

Now they want it to go into production more. Absolutely. In your conversations, what do you see as the biggest bottleneck in making that leap?

I think I said earlier about one was the noise that comes. So people are trying to figure out that with so much noise, so many different changes, technology pace, what should I go with and what should I not? If I think about it, I have never seen people talk about so much technology ever.

And I keep going back and saying that instead of that, let's talk about outcomes. So I think the bottleneck has been this noisy market, and people are trying to make sense about it while they have to run their own business. Mm-hmm.

So that's a big part. And then I think what people are, again, connecting back to a clear outcome that you want in one department or few places, and then show that outcome, which is truly moving the needle... not something which is as good enough to feel good about one case or the other.

The impact of that outcome needs to match with the impact that this technology can bring. So those two things have to come together. Lastly, we have seen many, many companies who are bolting on AI on top of what their products are.

Yes. Right? And for us, this is about orchestrating work end to end.

Mm-hmm. Right? It is about going where work is.

And when you orchestrate it end to end, AI becomes an enabler because the way a business runs in a certain way, AI supercharges it. Right. As opposed to you change your business to fit into one application suite.

So those are some of the changes that are causing customers to think, what direction should I go? A thing that I'm hearing is they just don't trust it. That's true.

But I think any kind of technology, a wave like this, or something with the greater the impact, there will always be doubts. It starts with doubts. There are fears, and rightly so.

You can't just trust anything. But then what I've learned in some of the earlier automation waves is that once you move from that step zero to one, and you make it work and drive one impact, then the penny drops. That's when the doubt converts into enthusiasm.

There's real joy. People are excited about it. At the same time, parallelly, some of the companies have to work together to create a governance and security framework, because what people need to do is how to apply AI for enterprise.

Yes. The security, the governance, the guardrails, how their businesses are running. You have to apply it responsibly.

It has to be inclusive. All these are the right questions, and these questions, the enterprise is responsible for. Mm-hmm.

So unless some of these things are not answered by the companies you work with, people are figuring out that we need all these answers. " I agree 100%. I think one of the things, too, is everybody's always looking for the shortcut.

Everybody always wants to cut a corner, do it a little faster, a little cheaper. And they underestimate what's really involved in being successful. Yeah.

Yeah, you could try it, but if you don't resource it right, if you don't follow the right procedures, processes, don't be surprised when it's a failure, when it doesn't work. Yeah. And so in your talking to enterprise leaders, what do you think they're underestimating?

I think, in general, you get enamored by every new tech. Mm-hmm. And the combination of these techs when they come together, that is very powerful.

Mm-hmm. There's no one silver bullet tech that will solve everything. Agentic AI is great, but when you combine that with the automation technologies, how to bring people in the loop.

How do you orchestrate work across the system? These are all things that are built in. When you make it work together, that is the real power, as opposed to just one step of AI giving you some answers, or just one big AI thing is going to solve everything.

So enterprises are complex. There are many systems, there are workflows, and after all this thing also, work doesn't just complete itself. For it to complete itself, something has to coordinate that work.

You have to orchestrate that, and that is the real power of working. People just think that something will come and replace. It doesn't replace.

" I again agree. Last kind of segment question for you, and it's a big picture one. There are going to be winners, there's going to be losers, there's going to be right things we do, wrong things we do.

And you know what they say, hindsight is always 2020, right? If we were using hindsight, we're sitting a few years from now, looking back over 2026, 2025, what do you think of what we got wrong? We maybe had stars in our eyes or something, and we just didn't see that coming.

We just missed the boat. We got it wrong. I'm an entrepreneur.

Mm-hmm. I'll give you my view. When you see a wave of a lifetime, for me, the only regret is that I didn't surf.

If there will be. There's no other regret, right? Mm-hmm.

So when I look at from a customer standpoint or even if I put myself in their shoe, there are things I don't want to compromise, like guardrails, security, governance, all that. That nothing workable. Mm-hmm.

What I don't want to, as a leader, I'm always worried is that here came something which was so powerful, but you are not ambitious enough. If you think small when something is powerful, what you end up doing is you end up becoming very myopic and do few use cases and become very satisfied, and before you know someone else has moved faster. I think so AI is like that.

It requires people. Agentic AI is definitely like that. Mm-hmm.

In an autonomous enterprise, the work does complete itself where we go, where work goes. It creates a tremendous opportunity for people to completely change their operating model, change their operating model, and create a moat between them and their competitors. But it requires you focusing on how to apply this tech to drive critical business outcomes, not do science projects, real business outcomes that your teams, your stakeholders, they understand, and you know that business.

So this is not about dripping a part of business. It's about taking something and making that business coordinate at a different level. And I think some people will get it wrong when they will just try to think of it as, "Oh, here is a new thing.

" But people will think like that will work. For example, I've seen some of our customers now saying, "All right, this is great, but I'm going to take one department, one function, and make it autonomous in two years. " Mm-hmm.

And then learn from that- Right ... and then you start at the next step. Give the example.

So look, every one of these things, we'll make mistakes. As long as we don't make big critical mistakes, we want to make mistakes fast and not- Fail fast, learn, and move on. Yeah.

I'm an entrepreneur myself. Ankur, always a pleasure. Thank you so much.

It is a pleasure talking to you. Thank you. All right.

Ankur Kothari, COO, co-founder here at Automation Anywhere. That's going to wrap our coverage of this year's Imagine Conference. A lot of learning here, a lot of enthusiasm.

We're going to be continuing our coverage. I've got a bunch of stuff I want to write up around this, so stay tuned for that. But until next time, this is Alan Schimmel for Techstrong TV.

Thanks for joining us.