Microsoft India's Chandok: Pair AI Skills With Empathy — SkimNews
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- Puneet Chandok, President of Microsoft India & South Asia, frames the new workforce around a 'human-AI barbell,' pairing technical AI capabilities with judgment, curiosity, emotional intelligence, and empathy.
- Microsoft's Work Trend Index 2026 found 32% of AI users in India are 'frontier professionals' combining agentic automation with human judgment—double the global average and the highest among the markets studied.
- Microsoft is targeting AI skilling for 20 million people in India, including 2 million teachers, and advises CEOs that at least one-third of their workforce should reach frontier-professional status.
- Air India rebuilt customer service on Microsoft AI to handle 13 million queries at 97% accuracy, while Adani Group, Axis Bank, Infosys, and TCS are deploying 'wall-to-wall copilots' across operations.
- Chandok flagged two gaps from the Work Trend Index: only 44% of leaders in India are aligned on the AI mission, and 25% of employees feel experiments are rewarded before outcomes.
- On hiring, Chandok said campus recruitment has shifted from degrees to 'proof,' asking candidates what they shipped in the past 90 days and how many versions they dropped before launch.
Why it matters: Microsoft is making India its showcase market for AI-augmented work, with a 20-million-person skilling pledge and enterprise deployments at Air India, Infosys, TCS, and others—but Chandok's own data flags execution risk, with only 44% of Indian leaders aligned on AI missions and just 25% of employees saying experimentation is rewarded on outcomes.
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