Agentic Commerce: India's Next UPI-Style Digital Leap, Says Razorpay CEO

Speaking with ANI at the India AI Impact Summit, he talked about the broader sentiment around AI in India, and said, "there is a lot of excitement and positivity about the opportunities AI presents."

"Most parts of the world are looking at AI with a lot of suspicion. They don't trust technology. They're worried about what it's going to do. Indians, by comparison, have had largely positive experiences with technological change," he said.

Highlighting examples such as UPI and Aadhaar, Mathur said digital innovations over the past decade have made life "easier, simpler, faster," fostering trust and openness toward new technologies. "There's a lot of positivity around technology and the same is happening with AI right now," he stated.

"India is now the second largest market for almost every major AI company in the world and is witnessing the highest adoption of voice-based AI. Several global industry leaders have described India as their fastest-growing market," he said.

Discussing Razorpay's AI initiatives, Mathur said the company has been an early adopter, integrating AI extensively into its internal systems and tooling. He pointed to "agentic commerce" as one of the most promising product-facing developments.

"We did a pilot with NPCI and OpenAI six months back. We did another launch yesterday with Claude to enable agentic commerce in India. Such systems could allow users, particularly from smaller towns or those less comfortable with English or traditional apps, to complete transactions through conversational AI in local languages," he said.

"Somebody in a small town who's not comfortable using apps or English can open an agent chatbot, ask something in Hindi or their local language, and ask it to place an order. It can buy stuff and deliver it for you without going to an app or downloading any app," he added.

Drawing parallels with India's digital payments revolution, Mathur said, "India took a leap with UPI and showed the world how real-time payments are supposed to be built. I think the same thing is going to happen with agent e-commerce."

Addressing concerns around job disruption, Mathur acknowledged that existing roles would change fundamentally but argued that new categories of employment would emerge. "It's really hard to imagine when you're going through the change," he said.

Referring to the rise of professions such as content creators and YouTubers over the past decade, Mathur said many traditional jobs have declined, but newer roles now better utilise human creativity and often offer higher incomes. "The same thing is going to happen with AI," he added.

"We'll have a completely new form of jobs. I can't imagine today, you can't imagine today, but as the new ecosystem comes in, there'll be a need for human intelligence and human creativity in some shape or form," Mathur said.

- ANI