50% of Our Code Will be AI-Generated in 18 Months: Aurigo CEO on Expanding India GCC
US-based Aurigo Software, known for developing capital planning and construction management software for large infrastructure projects, has recently expanded its presence in India, not just as a backend hub but as a core engine of innovation. The GCC in India now serves as the company’s primary hub for product development. Of its 600 global employees, nearly 500 are now based in Bengaluru, making India the undisputed R&D powerhouse for the company. “We’ve always had a small R&D centre here,” Balaji Sreenivasan, founder and CEO of Aurigo, said in an exclusive interaction with AIM. “However, the last five to six years have seen an intentional shift. All of our engineering is now centred in Bengaluru.” Sreenivasan, however, pointed out that this isn’t a conventional GCC. “We’re not a service arm. This is a product-first team where the engineering actually happens—the code is written here, the innovation happens here.” However, Sreenivasan is quick to add that headcount is no longer the leading indicator of growth in tech, especially in an AI-first era. “The future of software companies doesn’t necessarily mean bigger teams,” he said. “We expect 50% of our code to be AI-generated within the next 18 months.” This trend is gaining momentum. For example, Y Combinator-backed startups claim to have generated 90% of their code by AI, while tech giants Google & Microsoft attribute approximately 30% of their code output to AI tools. That’s where AI has truly shaped Aurigo’s product development lifecycle as well. Sreenivasan explained that while it took four to five years to achieve the right product-market fit for a government project, the company was able to build a prototype for the private sector in under 90 days. It is set to go into production by September, all with the help of tools like Lovable and Figma AI. What AI Means for Aurigo’s Workforce Despite being bullish on AI, Sreenivasan has no illusions about the human side of the equation. “It’s not about replacing everyone with AI agents,” he clarified. “It’s about asking: what do the next 600 employees look like?” While some manual tasks, like testing, will undoubtedly be automated, the focus is on reskilling. As the company continues to grow at 30-40% year-over-year, its hiring strategy is evolving. It’s not about endlessly expanding the team, but about hiring smarter and faster. Aurigo is already building AI agents for both internal use and customer-facing solutions, with plans to deploy approximately 15 AI agents in the next quarter. One major AI offering for Aurigo is Lumina GPT—a suite of AI tools built with the help of OpenAI’s API, Meta’s Llama, and other open-source models. It sits on top of Aurigo’s flagship platform, Masterworks, hosted on AWS. Eventually, Aurigo wants Masterworks to have Lumina GPT natively integrated. To support this, Aurigo is relying on a combination of open-source tools and in-house code. While platforms like Lovable are used for rapid prototyping, the production code for enterprise-grade deployments is still largely proprietary. From Government to Data Centres Aurigo’s products have traditionally catered to government agencies, helping manage massive public infrastructure like highways and bridges. However, the market is evolving. A good example of this is Aurigo Engage, which is essentially a digital town hall that helps governments make more equitable infrastructure decisions. It allows citizens to engage via their phones or web browsers easily. Through quick polls and comments, people can express support or opposition to projects like flyovers or metro stations. The platform’s natural language processing (NLP) engine then analyses this feedback at scale, surfacing insights that guide cities and states on where public funds should be spent to reflect the collective will. Another of Aurigo’s long-standing clients is the state of Utah. Back in 2016, Utah selected Aurigo after an extensive procurement process that included evaluating solutions from Oracle, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), KPMG, and others. The state was losing approximately $100 million annually due to inefficiencies like poor data access, a lack of transparency, and delays in project oversight. From planning and prioritisation to construction management and post-completion maintenance, Utah has transitioned from using a single module to embracing the entire suite since adopting Aurigo’s platform. Over the past six years, the state has reported efficiency gains of 4–5% annually, translating to $50–60 million in savings, which has contributed to a billion-dollar infrastructure budget. That’s taxpayer money being preserved and reinvested, with the software costing less than 0.5% of the total spend. “We sell to government and enterprise clients, so the bar for security, latency, and reliability is high,” Sreenivasan explained. “That’s why we’ve conservatively targeted 50% AI-generated code. If we were building consumer apps, it might be 90%. But our customers demand more.” The company envisions a future where user interfaces themselves are transformed. Instead of building dashboards and reports, users will just ask the system questions, and the AI agent will fetch the data and provide a narrative. Most of its clients are in the US, as India remains somewhat sceptical of AI in enterprises, even though consumers are ready to adopt AI. “We realised that the next 10 years of construction will also be about data centres, EV corridors, power grids, and manufacturing facilities,” Sreenivasan explained. “That meant we had to build a whole new set of products for the private sector.” For Sreenivasan, adopting AI is no longer a strategic choice—it’s a necessity. “You don’t want to be using a matchstick when everyone else has a lighter. You don’t want to bring a knife to a gunfight,” he said.
“It’s not about replacing everyone with AI agents. It’s about asking: what do the next 600 employees look like?”
Of its 600 global employees, nearly 500 are now based in Bengaluru, making India the undisputed R&D powerhouse for the company.
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Mohit writes about AI in simple, explainable, and often funny words. He's especially passionate about chatting with those building AI for Bharat, with the occasional detour into AGI.