Pega’s Blueprint is a GenAI-powered visual workspace that lays out workflow stages, data models, roles, and integrations into a ready-to-build design that business and technology form together. in an exclusive conversation Goutham Parcha, Vice President, Pega Applications, Pegasystems inform Rajneesh De, Group Editor, APAC Media and CXO Media about ambition Our goal is to make Pega the agent-native AI platform of choice for building and running enterprise applications, serving developers, business users, and end users alike.
What are the solutions and services offered by the Pegasystems portfolio in India?
India is not a separate market for us and we are deploying the same globally unified Pega Infinity platform here. It’s built on workflow automation, AI-powered decision-making, Pega customer service, and 1:1 customer engagement, along with process mining, robotic automation, and GenAI blueprints. They all serve one purpose: connect people, data, systems, and decisions. This makes important work happen faster and every customer experience consistently best-in-class.
And India is at the heart of that mission, with nearly 38% of its employees and around 60% of its product development worldwide based in centers in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. So this is not just a market to use the platform. That builds it.
How would you elaborate on Pega’s GenAI blueprint in the Indian scenario?
Blueprints solve problems that every company is familiar with. In other words, businesses have ideas and IT builds solutions, but the two don’t match perfectly. Blueprints bridge that gap. This is a GenAI-powered visual workspace where both parties start from the same design. In other words, when you write an application in natural language, a blueprint lays out workflow stages, data models, roles, and integrations into a buildable design that business and technology form together.
With over 100,000 blueprints created worldwide, this is already the fastest adopted innovation in Pega’s history. For the Indian Gulf state, which now owns a global transformation program, this means being able to move from idea to execution much more quickly and with real clarity and control.
What is your advice to Indian companies on best practices to harness the creative potential of GenAI?
My advice is simple. Don’t use AI everywhere just because everyone else is doing it. Many of today’s trends are driven by the fear of missing out (FOMO as Gen Z calls it), but businesses can’t afford unpredictable outcomes, and indiscriminate AI will do just that. The real skill is judgment. It’s about knowing where AI truly adds value and where proven automation is the smarter choice.
Choose higher-value use cases, predefine outcomes, build governance early, and embed AI within your actual workflows. That way, you get what your business actually needs, with predictable results at predictable costs. Leveraging GenAI is not about using more GenAI. It is important to use it correctly.
What role does Pega play in different market segments such as intelligent automation, customer engagement, and customer service solutions? What vertical traction are you witnessing?
Our role is to connect what most organizations separate. Intelligent automation integrates workflow, AI, machine learning, robotic automation, and BPM into a single platform. For customer engagement, Pega Customer Decision Hub makes next-best decisions for each customer in real time. And for customer service, Pega Customer Service runs intelligent journeys on existing systems to modernize the experience without tearing down the core.
The proof is in the results. A major North American insurance company used Pega AI to reduce an approximately $25 million modernization program to a fraction of the cost and time. Vodafone has automated tasks at scale. And large banks have reduced average processing times by 8-10%. The strongest traction is precisely in banking, insurance, telecommunications, and across GCC-led businesses, where volume, regulation, and complexity are highest.
What are the key pillars of Pega’s GTM strategy in India? What are the key initiatives under this strategy?
Our entry into the Indian market relies on our Global Capability Center (GCC). GCC is increasingly influencing, not just executing, the enterprise architecture decisions of its parent organizations. That’s why we engage directly with their leadership through Leadership Connect, practical solutions sessions, and expert circles, and upskill their teams through certifications, ensuring that influence flows both ways.
We scale all this through our unique platform, our ecosystem-powered flagship events like PegAInnovate, Pegafest, Expert Circles, and Pega Days.
What is the overall partner ecosystem that Pega currently follows in India? What are the dynamics of these partnerships?
I think of the partner ecosystem as a triangle: Pega, partners, and clients all working towards the same outcome. We actively encourage partners to independently sell Pega solutions to both new and existing customers. When they are with a client, they bring industry knowledge and we bring a platform to solve problems faster than we could on our own.
We provide them with published client success stories so they can speak with real authenticity. And this model is maturing from implementation support to full-fledged co-design. Powered by Pega Blueprint allows partners to incorporate domain expertise directly into their designs from the first blueprint. Our global partners include Accenture, Capgemini, Cognizant, EY, Infosys, TCS, and Virtusa.
What are Pegasystems’ major expansion plans in India these days?
Our expansion is rooted in engineering. With approximately 38% of our global workforce and 60% of our product development in India, our teams in Bangalore and Hyderabad are at the heart of Pega’s global product development, including our core Infinity platform, enterprise applications, GenAI innovations like Blueprint, and the cloud engineering that powers it all.
So expanding here means deepening exactly where Pega is built. But it goes beyond the footprint. We’re reigniting our University Alliances program to build a steady pipeline of Pega-skilled talent, and partnering with academies and training partners to grow the broader certification ecosystem our clients and partners rely on. Ecosystems will only grow if your skills scale with them. So this is as much a story about people and skills as it is about real estate.
How is hyperautomation transforming traditional business models in India? What role is Pega playing in this transformation?
The real change is that automation is no longer about tasks, but results. Don’t start by asking which tasks to automate. We ask our customers what kind of experience and results they want to create, and we automate towards it. For bank customers, this means delivering the right experience at the right time throughout the process, rather than automating one individual step.
Meanwhile, for complex organizations running many legacy systems, our Agentic Process Fabric leverages the power of agents to seamlessly connect systems, applications, and data, giving enterprises outcome-driven automation with complete visibility and control. In this way, hyperautomation is transforming business models in India. That means from doing things faster to doing things better for the customer.
How should Indian companies address cultural, budgetary, and change management challenges when implementing GenAI?
There are three different challenges here, each requiring its own answer. Culturally, learning agility and a growth mindset are important, and teams need to understand where AI fits and be willing to learn and adapt. Using AI indiscriminately within your budget is the quickest route to cost overruns, so figure out exactly which problems really need AI and which ones need proven automation. That precision is what keeps spending predictable. When it comes to change management, start small. One pilot team, a clear change agent, proves value with a single workflow, and then scales with senior leaders who visibly drive adoption. Treating change as an afterthought will cause even the perfect pilot to stall before production. And since trust is the foundation for everything else, security and governance must be built in from day one through all three.
Can you tell us more about Pega India University Program, UAP?
Our university academic program, UAP, is one of the clearest examples of how demand drives us forward, rather than us pushing the program. This directly addresses campus recruitment that our clients and partners are already planning. That’s why a high-quality talent pipeline is not just a nice-to-have, it’s critical to the ecosystem.
Run on two tracks. SmartBridge, an implementation partner that has been working with us for the past year, is joined by ai4process, The Skill Enhancers, and Tinkr Learning. We’ve built a cohort of 800-1,000 engineering graduates across 50+ campuses and trained them in Blueprints, Gen AI, and Agent Engineering.
Also, through direct university partnerships with VEMU, UEM Kolkata and Woxen, we train and certify our professors themselves, so these skills are built directly into engineering education rather than bolted on afterwards. What I pay most attention to is balance. While we’re passionate about technology training, we’re equally serious about the consulting and people skills that determine whether our graduates can be truly productive from day one.
The latest step is a 5-week fully virtual national internship program powered by SmartBridge, which we will be offering to engineering students across India. If you get this balance right, the numbers stop being headlines and become a talent pipeline that the industry can actually build upon.
What will be Pega’s focus areas in the coming quarters?
Our ambitions are clear. Our goal is to make Pega the agent-native AI platform of choice for building and running enterprise applications, serving developers, business users, and end users alike. The near-term focus is to move AI from experimentation to controlled business execution, moving enterprises beyond pilots to running AI in real-world operations at scale.
What anchors everything is one promise: predictable results at predictable costs. In a market where spending on AI is likely to grow rapidly, predictability will separate the leaders. For India, that means deepening our collaboration with GCC, strengthening our partner ecosystem, increasing developer engagement through Expert Circles, and building a deep bench of certified Pega talent. All of this goes back to agent AI that businesses can trust to deliver.
