The "jugaad" or the frugal innovation mindset that our country people are known have remained true to that part of their identities. No pun intended. This time, the innovations that have been incubated at universities, individual start-ups have been truly in line with the need of the hour - evading the human touch with a sense of humanitarian.

Innovation has spurred India's response to COVID-19. Across the country, entrepreneurs and innovators have quickly devised new apps, robots and ventilators to help overcome the pandemic.

Apps to detect Corona virus suspects nearby, robots to administer treatments and provide support to quarantine patients and much more are being reported in the country.

Sustaining the Artificial Intelligence (AI) mindset, India Inc will see the next wave of innovation to continue the fight against Covid-19 and for the socio-economic recovery once the lockdown restrictions begin to ease a bit.

In fact, in BC (Before Corona) times, one of the leading private banks deployed algorithm-based video interviews along with aptitude tests to hire customer service officers from a lot of 40,000 applicants. The only human interaction the selected 2000 candidates had was at the time of receiving the offer letters from HR managers.

Another insurance company used video assessment software from giants such as IBM, Microsoft to analyse the candidates' state of minds and describe the emotions such as anger, happiness, confidence, decisiveness, agility, ability to work in a team and so on.

With so much work that is required to be done with regard to social distancing, no human contact AI and robotics might soon take over jobs that might are being done by humans till now.

The Pandemic has paved way for new inventions and bold innovations. Industry leaders have accelerated their innovation efforts while their business continuity plans are evolving as the world moves into the new normal of working from home. Industry predictions had suggested that machines will have intelligence equal to that of humans by 2035.

In the middle of what experts call as the mother of all recession and with the fear of spreading the infection, future seems a bit too near for machines to take over. Just how robots are taking over to dispense sanitiser and conduct temperature checks, soon HR managers will resort to no-human contact employee onboarding. Robots interviewing candidate, virtual tours by chatbots, and much more will be added to the Interview funnel. And, with our "Jugaadus" working from home, we can expect a lot more innovative us of AI in the recruitment arena benefiting both the recruiter as well as the candidate.