With the pandemic hitting both bottom and top-line growth for companies and social distancing becoming often a matter of life and death, the spotlight is on AI as a safe route for businesses and living one’s life insecure ways in the New Normal. As the pandemic brings digitization to far-flung corners of India, demand for multilingual customer support and AI solutions has shot up — both a way to ensure safe and efficient customer service in the Covid Era and beyond. Against this dramatic backdrop, the first dispatch of our series “Decoding the Future of AI in Covid Age” sees a discussion on how corporate leaders are using AI and how the pandemic could be a gamechanger for the future of AI. Mr. Sourabh Gupta, Founder and CEO of Vernacular AI, an AI-First SaaS business, joins Mr. Ratan Kumar Kesh, Executive VP and Head, Retail Operations and Services, Axis Bank for a chat.