How UiPath Is Driving Agentic Automation for Smarter Enterprises

Time of India

6 days ago

Artificial intelligence continues to evolve beyond demos. Enterprises are transitioning from rule-based robotic process automation to a more dynamic, intelligent approach—agentic automation. At the heart of this shift is UiPath, a company that began its journey by simplifying mundane tasks through software bots and is now championing a bold new vision.From simple bots to intelligent agents, the journey of UiPath is being recast as a two-act play, with Act One defined by traditional RPA and Act Two powered by autonomous, decision-making AI agents.
From RPA to AI Agents: A Decade of Evolution
'It just started as a small software, fluffy little bot, not very flashy. But it was very fast and accurate,' recalls Arun Balasubramanian, VP & MD, India & South Asia, UiPath, as he traces the company's early beginnings. Balasubramanian notes how these bots quickly gained traction by automating repetitive, low-value tasks, freeing employees to focus on more strategic work.
The platform matured by integrating machine learning and computer vision, enabling more intelligent capabilities. 'Through sustained engineering efforts and innovation, the bots became more intelligent and capable,' he says. 'These advancements laid the foundation for agentic automation.'
Agentic automation represents a significant technological leap—what Balasubramanian describes as 'intelligent agents which can really think on our behalf and really act and decide in terms of what actions to be done.' He notes that while the first phase of automation delivered significant efficiency, 'the second phase of the journey is even more exciting.'
UiPath is now focused on a strategy that brings together AI, ML, natural language processing, and Gen AI models under one unified platform, offering customers not just smarter bots but autonomous agents that can operate independently in real-world scenarios.
Market Momentum: India Leads the Way
India has emerged as one of the fastest-growing markets for agentic automation solutions from UiPath. Sectors such as healthcare,
pharma
, manufacturing, and banking are at the forefront, piloting complex use cases with the technology.
Balasubramanian cites a real-world healthcare use case to illustrate the value of these AI agents. 'It's so easy to get into a hospital and get admitted. But if you want to come out... it's so painful,' he says, referring to the challenges of invoice processing and insurance claims. Agentic automation from UiPath is helping streamline these workflows, ensuring a smoother discharge process and better patient experience.
The company has already onboarded its first customer in India under the agentic automation preview, coinciding with its recent flagship event, DevCon in Bangalore 'We already have our first customer here in the country who signed up for agentic automation... and we have a lot of our customers who are also doing beta on some of the specific use cases,' Balasubramanian adds.
Gautam Goenka
, VP - Engineering & Site Head, UiPath, details the scale and pace of adoption. 'We have been iterating with hundreds of customers, building thousands of agentic automations and use cases,' he says.
Building Reliable Agents: The Engineering Challenge
Behind the promise of agentic automation lies a complex engineering challenge. 'Building an enterprise agent is a hard problem,'
Goenka
states plainly. Many solutions perform well in demo environments but falter under the pressures of production-grade data and use cases.
Goenka outlines three key considerations that UiPath follows to ensure reliability and scalability in real-world deployments.
The first is segmentation of the automation journey into deterministic and indeterministic steps. 'Use Intelligent Process Automation for the deterministic part. Use agents for the probabilistic or indeterminate part where you need more decision making,' he says. The orchestration tool from
UiPath, Maestro™
, then stitches together these modular automations.
Second, ensure guardrails are in place to control AI outputs. Goenka warns of AI's potential to 'act and give all kinds of wrong data,' stressing the need for enterprise guardrails. These include human-in-the-loop supervision for sensitive actions and context grounding, ensuring agents rely solely on enterprise-approved data sources.
The third critical requirement is rigorous testing and evaluation during the design phase. 'There's no substitution to testing,' Goenka notes. The
agent builder
from UiPath supports a full software development lifecycle, including health scoring, model comparison, and test data evaluation, to ensure agents are production ready.
Why Continuous Learning Is Non-Negotiable for Developers
In a world where technological change is relentless, Goenka believes that adaptability isn't just a good-to-have—it's a survival skill. 'We are in an era where things are changing at a fast rate,' he says. 'The rate of acceleration is accelerated, right? That's how I put it.'
For developers, this means that the shelf life of skills is shrinking, and the only way to stay relevant is by embracing a mindset of constant learning. 'Whatever we know today may be obsolete in six, nine months down the line—we have to adapt to that, learn all those things,' he explains.
From understanding GenAI concepts to adding value through architecture and design, developers can't afford to stand still. 'There's no substitute to continuous learning,' he insists.
A Platform for the Future
UiPath is positioning itself not just as a vendor of automation tools but as an orchestration layer for intelligent decision-making across enterprises. By combining deterministic automation with autonomous AI agents, the company believes it can solve a broader range of business problems with higher reliability.
Balasubramanian is optimistic about what lies ahead. 'We are embarking on this agentic automation journey, bringing in a lot of innovation,' he says.
As enterprises face growing pressure to drive efficiency and agility, the shift from RPA to agentic automation could mark a turning point in how digital work gets done. With India leading the early wave of adoption, the second act for UiPath is poised to be the most transformative yet.
The spokesperson is Arun Balasubramanian, VP & MD, India & South Asia, UiPath & Gautam Goenka, VP - Engineering & Site Head, UiPathNote: This article is a part of ETCIO's Brand Connect Initiative.