Ikea's Digital Chief on AI: Why India Is Outpacing Europe

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents Ikea's Digital Chief on AI: Why India Is Outpacing Europe.

When a corporation like Ikea manages its digital transformation for 30 countries, you automatically get a good sense of where digitalization is actually happening today – and where people are just talking about it. That's exactly what Parag Parekh, Chief Digital Officer of Ikea, discusses in the new episode of the Handelsblatt podcast "Disrupt." His thesis: India is ahead of Europe on AI in key areas.

You might be asking yourself: India, of all places? The country that was still known mainly as an outsourcing destination ten years ago? Parekh sees it differently. In the podcast episode, he traces how rapidly India has developed into an AI hotspot in recent years – with a tech scene that experiments faster than Europe in many areas.

What Parekh particularly highlights in the conversation: the contrast between local experiments and global rollouts. In other words, the balancing act that every large corporation knows – testing an idea in one market here, deciding whether to roll it out across all 30 countries there. Sounds like corporate blah-blah, but it's exactly the point where AI projects fail in many companies.

What does India's AI lead mean in concrete terms?

Parekh makes clear in the podcast that it's not about a single product or app. In his assessment, India has built an ecosystem: a dense startup scene, many well-trained developers, and above all a mindset that rewards rapid experimentation instead of months-long coordination loops.

What this means for you: When a furniture giant like Ikea can test new AI tools faster there, ideas land on the shelf – or in the online shop – sooner. Europe, meanwhile, is still debating regulation, data protection, and frameworks. Both are important, but Parekh raises the uncomfortable question of whether Europe is losing touch in the process.

AI is also changing the CDO job itself

One point that comes up in the conversation and is surprising: AI is changing not only products and processes, but also the role of the Chief Digital Officer itself. Parekh describes how his area of responsibility is shifting through AI tools – away from being a pure project manager, toward someone who allows, orchestrates, and builds global strategies from experiments.

Why this matters to you too

You might be thinking now: Isn't this a corporate topic? But Ikea is just the example. What Parekh describes plays out similarly in many large companies: AI decisions are made at the CDO level, international rollouts determine whether you as a customer in Germany, India, or Sweden get the same smart experience – or not.

So the episode gives you a behind-the-scenes look at one of the world's largest furniture retailers, without marketing speak, but with clear theses. If you're interested in how global players think about AI today and why India keeps coming up as a role model, this episode is worth your time.