AI and the Future of Work: Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace, Business, Ethics, HR, and IT for AI Enthusiasts, Leaders and Academics
347: Will AI Agents Redefine Automation? Balancing Autonomy and Guardrails with Bhaskar Roy, Chief of AI Products and Solutions at Workato
Aug 04, 2025
Season 6
Episode 347
Dan Turchin
Bhaskar Roy is the Chief of AI Products & Solutions at Workato, the workflow automation leader with more than 11,000 customers and a $5.7 billion valuation. He has been with the company for nearly 11 years, previously serving as CMO. A serial head of products, Bhaskar co-founded Qik, which was acquired by Skype in 2011 for $150 million and later by Microsoft for $8.5 billion, and later held leadership roles at Playphone. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the Birla Institute of Technology in Mesra, India.
In this conversation, we discuss:
- Bhaskar’s journey from co-founding Qik to leading AI products at Workato, and why a lightbulb moment convinced him to pivot from marketing back to product innovation
- What Bhaskar learned from building products that scale globally and how those lessons shape his view on AI’s real-world impact
- Why Bhaskar sees AI agents as the next leap beyond low-code automation and how they orchestrate complex business processes
- The balance between deterministic workflows and AI’s reasoning capabilities, and how to maintain human oversight
- How enterprises can move beyond AI experiments at the fringes to transformative use cases that deliver measurable ROI
- The cultural shift required to embrace AI in the workplace, from reducing fear of automation to unlocking new opportunities for employees
Resources: