Accenture CEO Urges AI Access for SMEs to Fuel Inclusive Global Growth

Addressing a keynote session at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 at Bharat Mandapam, Sweet highlighted India's central role in the AI-driven future and lauded the company's workforce in the country.

"At Accenture, we're incredibly proud to have over 350,000 and growing reinventors here in India. The firm also operates one of the world's largest AI workforces integrated across global hubs," she said.

Sweet also stressed equitable access, urging public-private partnerships to ensure small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) benefit from AI adoption. She noted that SMEs account for about half of global GDP and 70 percent of employment in the Global South.

"We must commit to providing access to the technology and the talent for small and medium-sized Enterprises. If we are to use AI as an engine for growth, we need to make sure that the engine for growth has teeth. Those size Enterprises have access 50 per cent of the world's GDP, are small and medium-sized Enterprises, and in the global South, it's 70 per cent of employment," she said.

"To do so, there will be lots of business opportunities. So many Industries will serve small and medium-sized enterprises, but that will not be enough. Private and public partnerships will be critical to making sure there's access," she added.

Sweet outlined three guiding perspectives for the AI era: using AI to drive growth, embracing unprecedented reinvention by companies and countries, and ensuring "humans in the lead, not humans in the loop."

Drawing parallels with earlier technological shifts, Sweet referenced a 2013 Oxford University study that warned 47 percent of US jobs were at risk of automation.

"Similar concerns accompanied the rise of robotic process automation (RPA), yet adoption ultimately created new roles and expanded industries. We used RPA to automate thousands of jobs... and we created many, many more jobs," she stated.

Citing Accenture's growth, Sweet said the firm expanded from roughly 275,000 employees and USD 29 billion in revenue in 2013 to over 750,000 employees and USD 70 billion in revenue today.

Emphasising AI's business value, Sweet pointed to Accenture's latest C-suite survey across 20 countries, where 78 percent of executives identified growth as AI's greatest benefit.

"AI must make the impossible possible, enabling new products, services, and performance levels. Sweet highlighted examples across sectors, including large language models reshaping consumer engagement, and AI accelerating pharmaceutical innovation by potentially reducing drug development timelines," she said.

Calling the AI agenda "unprecedented," Sweet urged companies to reinvent operations, invest in workforce reskilling, and commit to sustained entry-level hiring. "AI fundamentally is changing what an entry-level job looks like," she said.

She further called on governments to prioritise lifelong learning and embed AI education early. Sweet commended India's efforts to integrate AI into primary education and advocated for global standards on AI safety and deployment to enable cross-border scalability.

"Technology, no matter how powerful, is only a tool," Sweet said, concluding that leadership -- defined by excellence, confidence, and humility will determine how AI shapes the future.

- ANI