The Indian Business and Professional Council (IBPC Dubai) brought business leaders, entrepreneurs and professionals together in Dubai for an AI Masterclass focused on a question that is rapidly moving to the top of every boardroom agenda – how can businesses turn AI from experimentation into measurable business advantage?
Hosted at Taj, JLT, the event was ably supported by TOSH NXT TECH VENTURES FZCO (commercial partners for Toshiba Europe & Kioxia Europe Tt & Future Wise) and led by Prof. Saravana Jaikumar, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Indian Institute of Management – Calcutta, the masterclass explored the rapidly changing economics of AI, practical applications for business and the shift from generative AI towards automation and agentic systems.
The event was organised through IBPC’s Technology, Digital and Innovation (TDI) platform and builds on the organisation’s TechPulse programme, expanding the conversation from introducing AI to applying it across business.
Opening the programme, Karthik Raman, TDI Convenor, IBPC Dubai, highlighted the dramatic decline in the cost of AI intelligence from around US$20 to seven cents per million tokens, a reduction of approximately 280 times.
“The question for business leaders is no longer simply what AI can do, but what can I do now that I couldn’t afford to do earlier,” he said. Karthik challenged businesses to look beyond using AI for content creation and instead consider how it can remove work, redesign processes and enable new business models.
“AI is beginning to cross a boundary from answering to acting.”
In his keynote, Prof. Saravana Jaikumar presented a practical framework for business adoption: Ask, Automate, Delegate and Orchestrate. The progression moves from asking AI questions, to automating defined processes, delegating tasks to AI and ultimately orchestrating multiple AI capabilities across a business.
One case study, involving CastLink Metals, illustrated the potential. After documenting its processes, the company identified quotation preparation as a bottleneck and developed a Quote Assistant using Claude. The system prepares the quotation, an engineer applies judgement and the CEO provides final approval, demonstrating a potential 5–10x improvement in efficiency.
Prof. Jaikumar also distilled the emerging AI opportunity into two concepts – “Skills hold your know-how. Agents put it to work.”
The discussion also addressed accuracy, ethics, transparency, data security and third-party AI risks.
A fireside chat moderated by Karthik Raman brought together industry stalwarts Dr Vinod Vasudevan, CEO and Chairman, FLYTXT.AI, and Naresh Kothari, Chairman and Managing Director, Intertec Systems. Dr Vasudevan, an AI researcher and technologist with 30 years of AI experience, 11 patents and more than 50 research publications, cautioned leaders against AI hype and stressed the importance of evaluation, testing and realistic expectations.
“I don’t believe in AI hype-we still need executives, but they need to get used to the efficiency of AI.” His recommendation – start with a specific use case, test it, learn from it and then scale.
Drawing on nearly five decades in technology, Kothari described AI as a powerful tool for experimentation and product development, while highlighting the need for guardrails, ethics, security, cost management and workforce reskilling. “If you want to adopt AI you have to reskill your colleagues.”
Both speakers pointed towards a future in which AI becomes part of normal business operations rather than a standalone “AI strategy”.
The masterclass workshop gave participants an opportunity to apply generative AI to practical business challenges, including process improvement, cost optimisation, product and service development and new revenue opportunities.
The programme was further boosted by Santosh Varghese, TDI Co-Convenor and Managing Director of TOSH NXT TECH VENTURES FZCO of who examined the infrastructure behind the AI economy, from compute and data to models, platforms and applications and highlighted the growing importance of data storage and digital infrastructure. The event also showcased cutting edge products and solutions by Toshiba/Kioxia.
Anju Bhatia of Future Education, the learning partner, was also well recognised for supporting the programme.
At the conclusion of the event, Suresh Kumar, Chairman Emeritus, IBPC Dubai, felicitated the keynote speaker, panellists and sponsors.
“This masterclass underscores a fundamental shift in how businesses should approach AI. As intelligence becomes dramatically cheaper, the opportunity extends far beyond content creation to removing work, redesigning processes and transforming how businesses operate,” concluded Professor Jaikumar.
He urged leaders to move from simply “asking” AI to automating, delegating and orchestrating work; start with measurable business problems, test and scale what works; and recognise that successful AI adoption depends as much on governance, human judgement and workforce reskilling as it does on technology.
