Inside a global AI company built in rapidly-growing India

In our series “The Age of Work,” Marketplace is looking at how changing demographics are reshaping the global economy.

Last month, “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal and ADP Chief Economist Nela Richardson, our project partner on the series, travelled to Mumbai, India, for the latest installment. India — with a median age of 29 — is a few years away from its demographic peak.

Qure.ai

Qure.ai is based in Mumbai, India, but it’s growing worldwide — including in the United States, where it has 26 clearances from the Food and Drug Administration. The company uses AI for early diagnosis of lung cancer and tuberculosis, among other health tech tools.

“The advantage that we had here was that we had access to a lot of data,” said Prashant Warier, co-founder and CEO of the company. “The number of people that go into any hospital in India is probably multitudes larger than any other system in other parts of the world, and so we had access to a lot of data to train the algorithms.”

Another advantage to being in India, Warier said, is the talent of its workforce. Ryssdal and Richardson visited Qure.ai’s headquarters and spoke to several of its young tech workers.

“It’s the kind of talent that would go study at Stanford and then work at Google or Microsoft,” Warier said.

Ryssdal and Richardson talked to him about the current narrative around artificial intelligence in the United States — namely, some people being afraid of the technology and what it could mean for their jobs.

“The fact is that everywhere outside of healthcare, AI is taking away people’s jobs because it is doing things that people can do,” Warier said. “But I think in healthcare, it can do things that people can’t do, and it can actually improve outcomes. So, I think healthcare is one of those places where it is creating a better world and increasing the GDP of the world.”

Warier noted India has had a tech-savvy population, “from the days of Y2K,” he said, and that he thinks the country will also be on the forefront of AI use.

The view of India’s economy from a major business district

Ryssdal and Richardson wrapped up their time in Mumbai in a business district called BKC, or the Bandra Kurla Complex, which is full of bank buildings, a WeWork skyscraper, and the first Apple Store in India.

“There is only one way an economy grows, and that’s if there are more workers, and those workers become more productive,” Richardson said. “I have faith that the economy always wins.”

Click the audio player above to hear more.