“AI will handle transactional, operational, and tactical work, improving productivity, while humans can focus on more strategic tasks that require empathy, emotions, and instincts—qualities that machines can’t replicate. This way, AI can enhance our work without replacing the need for human insight,” said Piyush Raghuvanshi, CHRO, Apna.

During his conversation with Deepa Damodaran, Editor of HR Excellence Magazines at HR.com, at FiesTA 2025, held recently in Bangalore, Karnataka, India, Piyush shares his insights on the growing influence of AI in HR and talent acquisition, the challenges, the opportunities, and the shift towards skills-based hiring in India, among others.

Excerpts from the interview:

Q: To what extent do you use AI, automation, and data analytics in your HR/TA function at Apna?

Piyush: Apna is an AI-driven platform company. We prefer to eat our dog food.

We are currently leveraging AI in our platform to streamline the hiring process. It helps us solve challenges related to sourcing and filling the top of the candidate funnel in line with our hiring mandates, thus driving greater efficiency.

Talent acquisition is one area where we’re heavily leveraging AI. The second area is employee engagement, where we’re using an AI-enabled chatbot. This allows employees to get answers to their queries without relying on HR business partners or the HR ops team.

We’ve implemented a Slack-enabled chatbot, called ‘Apna HR’, where employees can quickly get answers to common questions like how many leaves they have, how to claim health insurance, how to get a health insurance card, or how to apply for leave. They can also ask about onboarding or manager changes.

Another important area for us is people capability. We’re constantly exploring ways to incorporate AI, both premium and free versions like ChatGPT or Gemini, into our daily activities. For example, we’re looking into how teams in technology, engineering, product, design, and operations can use AI as a research or transactional assistant to drive efficiency.

We’re encouraging teams to start with freemium versions of AI tools, build use cases, and then consider upgrading to premium versions where needed.

Q: What is your strategy for acquiring AI skills within your organization? Do you also focus on reskilling and upskilling your existing employees?

Piyush: Our strategy for acquiring AI skills in the organization is rooted in our DNA as a next-gen tech company and startup. We’re always an early mover, preferring to take advantage of new technologies quickly. The culture at Apna is all about ‘moving fast, failing fast, and learning fast’.

While we do hire people with prior AI experience when possible, these technologies are still fairly new. Even if we hire a fully qualified AI engineer or product manager, their experience may only be 2-3 years at most. So, instead of constantly looking externally, we’ve focused on encouraging our internal teams to start leveraging AI tools. We encourage our product and engineering teams to explore available free tools and resources. Our teams hold weekly or monthly town halls, where AI becomes a key topic. We emphasize the importance of using public resources—platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, and Reddit—which offer a wealth of training and educational content.

Additionally, we’ve implemented an "AI champion" role within each team. Through our internal learning initiative, Apna Academy, we ask team members to pick topics and educate each other. The idea is "each one. teach one," creating a collaborative learning environment. This peer-to-peer approach has been very effective.

For instance, our product engineering, quality engineering, data engineering, design, marketing, PR, and content teams use various AI tools and share their success stories and best practices. These shared experiences help teams use AI to work more efficiently and get more from less.

Looking ahead, we’re focused on finding more opportunities for reskilling and upskilling our internal employees in AI as part of our 2025 operating plan.

Q: What have been your biggest challenges when it comes to AI adoption within your organization? How did you address the concerns?

Piyush: As for challenges, one of the biggest hurdles is ensuring that employees have enough time and motivation to engage with these new tools and learning opportunities while balancing their core responsibilities.

The challenge we face is often psychological and human in nature—driving change can be difficult. People tend to rely on past experiences, thinking, "This worked for me before, so let's jump right into it." We tend to quickly move into solution mode or execution mode.

To address this, as I mentioned earlier, we’ve started identifying champions to help drive adoption. The challenge, however, lies in getting widespread adoption across the organization. While there are areas where AI adoption is progressing well, like in our tech teams, there are other areas—such as operations, customer experience, marketing, HR, and finance—that are lagging behind.

These teams need a bit more encouragement and support. We're focusing on increasing communication and engagement, and urging them to start using free tools to see how they work. A big part of successfully leveraging AI is the ability to give the right instructions. AI tools can serve as great support systems, acting as research or executive assistants, but the key is knowing how to ask the right questions.

We need to educate our teams on how to use these tools more effectively. For example, our tech teams are doing a great job of learning about prompt engineering. While you don’t need to be an expert in prompt engineering, the key is being able to clearly articulate your tasks and ask the right questions.

Additionally, we're encouraging teams to use voice commands instead of typing. This speeds up the process and takes advantage of AI's ability to understand natural language, which improves the quality of the responses.

Q: There are some concerns about ethics, bias, and the responsible use of AI. How do you ensure that these tools are used without bias, and what measures do you have in place to ensure ethical standards are maintained when using such technology in your company?

Piyush: It's still early in the journey, but ethical AI use and data privacy are important. In fact, the Ministry of Information and Technology in India is already working on regulations and frameworks. While we’re still in the early stages, we are prioritizing ethical AI usage and data privacy.

Currently, we're implementing controls to ensure compliance, especially around privacy, as we handle both B2C and B2B data. We’re focused on minimizing bias in algorithms through data consumption and deep learning to continuously improve the system. Data privacy and personally identifiable information (PII) are critical, and we're putting measures in place to ensure we're compliant with standards like ISO.

That said, we acknowledge that there’s still a long way to go. In HR, we have something called the “Johari Window,” which means there’s a lot we don't yet know. Our products and processes are constantly evolving, and we're learning as we go. For now, in areas where we know there could be risks—such as trust, safety, data privacy, or fraudulent activities—we’re taking extra precautions, even manually handling some things if necessary to avoid non-compliance.

Q: AI will replace humans in HR. What is your take on it?

Piyush: I don’t believe that’s the case. While every new technology brings concerns about job displacement, I think we need to focus on evolving.

Instead of worrying about AI replacing humans, we should focus on moving from volume-based tasks to value-added work. Humans will always be the masters of machines. AI needs clear instructions and guidance, which will always require a human element.

AI will handle transactional, operational, and tactical work, improving productivity, while humans can focus on more strategic tasks that require empathy, emotions, and instincts—qualities that machines can’t replicate. This way, AI can enhance our work without replacing the need for human insight.

Q: Could you provide an overview of how some job roles in HR and talent acquisition (TA) might evolve with the integration of AI?

Piyush: Some job roles in HR and TA are likely to evolve or become obsolete with the rise of AI. For example, roles like HR help desk or service desk positions, where employees mainly answer queries, will gradually phase out as AI chatbots take over these tasks. Similarly, jobs related to interview scheduling, sourcing, and screening candidates will become redundant, as technology will handle these more efficiently.

Positions that focus on analyzing data and providing quick insights will also be affected, as AI will offer better and more comprehensive solutions. However, as these roles evolve, individuals will be able to transition into more strategic positions. For instance, sourcers and schedulers might evolve into recruiters, and eventually, into roles like recruitment business partners or talent advisors. These roles will focus more on business partnering, solution-oriented thinking, and understanding the context in-depth, enabling them to guide AI in crafting the right solutions.

Across industries, low-end jobs are expected to be automated, but roles requiring higher-level thinking, strategy, and ‘solutioning’ will remain human-centric. As AI adoption increases, humans will continue to play a crucial role in driving innovation, strategy, and complex decision-making.

Q: In the U.S., there's been a growing shift towards valuing skills over degrees. How is this trend playing out in the Indian market?

Piyush: I think it's evolving here, but we're not quite there yet. The Western markets are about 10 to 15 years ahead of us in this regard.

In many cases, we tend to look at the success stories and use cases from Western markets and then try to replicate them in India. Whether it's in sectors like marketplaces, travel, food tech, or travel tech—think of how Uber led to Ola, DoorDash to Zomato, or Airbnb to OYO. Similarly, platforms like Indeed and LinkedIn paved the way for Naukri and Apna in the HR space.

I’m very optimistic about the future of the Indian job market. It’s growing at a double-digit rate, with estimates showing a 10-12% growth this year. In fact, I recently came across a staffing industry report that projected a growth of 13-14%. These are well-researched reports, and the outlook is positive.

India's advantage lies in its emerging economy, which sets us apart from some other South Asian markets. We have the largest workforce, and the shift from a degree-based approach to skills-based hiring is already underway. Historically, degrees in India were more aligned with execution or clerical roles from the old British schooling system. But that’s changing now, as academia is increasingly focusing on entrepreneurship and skill development.

In addition, the growth in internet and mobile penetration has sparked a revolution in skills awareness. Employers are becoming more flexible and are starting to prioritize skills over traditional pedigree, moving away from the tier-one and tier-two pedigree mindset.

While there’s still a gap due to the sheer volume of the workforce versus the number of available jobs, the trend is evolving, and I’m confident we’ll continue to see positive changes in the job market.

Q: With the executive order passed by Trump regarding DEI and gender identity, there have been reports that some companies are pulling back on their DEI policies and goals. Do you think this could have repercussions in a market like India?

Piyush: I think it's still too early to say. We need to see how corporations and enterprises in India respond to these shifts. From an Indian market perspective, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and equal opportunity initiatives have largely been driven by Western markets. Many global organizations with a presence in India, South Asia, or the Middle East have followed guidelines set by the U.S.

Indian organizations, on the other hand, have generally been more flexible and neutral when it comes to these issues. The sectors most influenced by U.S.-based companies might see some changes, but overall, I don’t expect it to have a significant impact on the Indian market.


 
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