India at the centre of German giant SAP's AI strategy, says CTO

German software firm SAP is placing India at the core of its artificial intelligence (AI) strategy, with all key engineering and AI deployments, including Joule AI, its copilot developed to integrate with and assist its business systems, centred at its Bengaluru campus, said its chief technology officer and chief AI officer Philipp Herzig.

"Our teams have moved here because this campus has a big focus on all our innovation topics. The strategy is to embed AI experiences deeply into all the products," Herzig told ET.

With a workforce of 15,000 and its largest development centre outside of Germany, the Devanahalli campus, inaugurated in August, also houses SAP's finance, human resources and procurement teams, among others, enabling a seamless execution of its AI strategy.


The Walldorf-headquartered company has deployed 20 AI agents across functions including finance, supply chain logistics, scenario planning and expense validation, with plans to expand to 40 agents by year-end. "They reduce these traditional tasks that used to take an hour or two to a few minutes by automating data preparation and analysis. That is the potential AI agents hold in creating business value," Herzig said.