Noida, Sep 10 (APAC Media): Hybrid work has changed what organisations expect from HR technology, and that has changed greytHR’s go-to-market conversation as well. In an exclusive conversation, Girish Rowjee, Co-founder & CEO, greytHR informs Rajneesh De, Group Editor, APAC Media & CXO Media that this has moved greytHR’s GTM approach from a largely function-led conversation to a more platform-led one.
Cloud access, mobile self-service, and connected workflows are no longer just product features but central to the platform story for distributed workforces.
Since greytHR started in India, and India remains its largest market. What scale does the platform operate at today?
greytHR is a full-suite, cloud-based HRMS platform that helps organisations manage the employee lifecycle from hire to retire.
Today, greytHR supports more than 34,000 organisations and 3.5 million employees across 30+ countries, with India continuing to be our largest and most mature market.
Across India, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, we process more than USD 24 billion in payroll annually. For us, these numbers are less about scale in isolation and more about the trust organisations place in a platform that handles some of their most sensitive and business-critical processes. Payroll, compliance and employee data leave very little room for error.
We started by solving payroll and compliance well, and then kept building around what customers needed. That took us from on-premise software to the cloud, and over time from a payroll product to a full-suite Hire-to-Retire HRMS.
The same customer-led thinking now guides how we are building AI natively into the platform. greytHR NAVOS, our AI-powered execution layer, is an important part of that shift – reducing repetitive work, helping HR teams act faster and making the overall experience simpler.
The technology has changed significantly over the years, but our purpose has stayed consistent: make HR simpler, more reliable and more accessible for growing businesses.
Why is Agentic AI the next evolution of HR software, and how is greytHR NAVOS shaping this shift?
For years, HR software has expected people to learn how the system works – which module to open, where a task sits and what sequence of steps to follow. Agentic AI starts to reverse that relationship. A user can increasingly express what they want to get done, and the system can understand the intent, draw on the right context and help complete the work.
That is particularly powerful in HR because there is a great deal of complexity underneath even a simple request – policies, permissions, payroll rules, approvals, compliance and organisational context. The user should not have to carry all of that complexity.
That is the thinking behind greytHR NAVOS. It is our AI-powered execution layer that helps users turn intent into action through simple, natural-language requests. Instead of only telling someone where to go, greytHR NAVOS can help complete tasks such as generating letters, downloading attendance musters, or approving leave – while working within the organisation’s existing roles, permissions and controls. Today, 58 agents are live across 8 capability areas.
How have greytHR’s solutions evolved over the years?
We started with payroll and compliance, and then kept building around what customers needed next. That has really been the pattern of greytHR’s evolution.
A major turning point came in 2011, when we moved to the cloud. It gave customers greater flexibility, made the platform easier to adopt and allowed us to bring more HR processes together. As our customers’ needs grew, so did the platform – expanding from core HR and payroll into areas such as attendance, recruitment and performance management. Today, greytHR is a full-suite Hire-to-Retire HRMS with 50+ tools across the employee lifecycle.
AI is now the next important phase of that journey. We are building intelligence into the platform to reduce repetitive work, cut down the number of steps users have to take and help them get to outcomes faster. greytHR NAVOS is an important part of that shift – moving the experience from navigating software towards simply expressing what needs to be done.
The technology has changed enormously over the years, but the principle behind our product decisions has stayed consistent – understand where customers are losing time or dealing with complexity, and use technology to take that away.
How are AI, automation, and cloud-based platforms changing the role of HR leaders?
AI, automation and cloud platforms are taking a significant amount of transactional work off HR’s plate and moving leaders closer to the work where human judgement matters most.
Cloud platforms have connected data and workflows, automation has reduced repetitive work, and AI is now helping interpret context, surface patterns and complete routine work. Payroll inputs, candidate screening, employee queries, attendance processing and approvals no longer need the same level of manual effort.
But capacity is not strategy. The value lies in what HR does with the time and insight it gets back – planning the workforce better, developing talent, strengthening managers and making better people decisions.
There is a second shift too. As AI reshapes tasks and roles, HR will have to lead job redesign, reskilling, redeployment and the conversations these shifts require. Technology can automate more of the workflow; HR still has to help the organisation decide how roles and skills evolve, and help people navigate that transition with clarity and trust.
In short, technology can take on more of the process, while HR leads the decisions and transitions that shape people and business outcomes.
How is AI transforming payroll, recruitment and employee experience of enterprises?
AI is transforming each of these areas differently, because the work itself is different.
In payroll, AI can reduce manual intervention, identify inconsistencies and make complex information easier to retrieve. It can surface salary differences before a pay run is finalised, helping teams focus on what needs attention rather than checking everything manually. But payroll is rule-heavy and highly sensitive to errors, so AI has to strengthen a sound processing and compliance foundation.
In recruitment, AI can reduce the time spent on screening and early-stage evaluation. greytHR Recruit uses AI-powered resume parsing and skill-based matching, while a pre-screening chatbot can engage candidates conversationally and help assess initial suitability. That gives recruiters more time to focus on candidate quality, role fit and the overall hiring experience.
Employee experience is where the shift becomes most visible. Rather than expecting people to know which policy, portal or workflow sits behind a request, AI can make HR interactions more immediate and contextual – helping employees get to the right information or action with less effort.
The larger shift is from expecting people to understand the HR system to designing the HR system around what people are trying to accomplish.
How is greytHR building an AI-native HR platform instead of isolated AI tools?
We see AI as a fundamental shift in how HR technology should work, so we are building it into the platform rather than treating it as a standalone capability. That means bringing intelligence into workflows and everyday interactions to reduce effort, simplify processes and help users reach outcomes faster.
Our approach has three layers. The first is intelligence built directly into individual workflows – from expense-receipt extraction and facial-recognition attendance to skill-based recruitment and payroll discrepancy checks. The second is greytHR NAVOS, our AI-powered execution layer, which helps users turn natural-language intent into action across the suite – not just find information, but get the task done. The third is the governance foundation, ensuring AI works within the organisation’s existing roles, permissions and controls, with confirmation before sensitive actions.
Because these capabilities sit within the HRMS rather than outside it, they can work with the relevant organisational context without creating another disconnected tool for users to learn. That means fewer steps, less manual effort and faster completion of everyday HR work.
How can enterprises balance AI automation with governance, security and role-based access?
AI adoption is moving faster than many organisations’ governance practices, and in HR that gap matters because the information involved is not only sensitive – it can directly affect people’s pay, performance and employment.
So greater automation should not be mistaken for greater autonomy. AI should work within the same roles and permissions that already govern the HR system. A payroll capability, for example, should only be able to access or act on what that user is already authorised to do in payroll. The same principle applies across recruitment, attendance and other HR workflows.
Sensitive actions should require confirmation, and there should be a clear record of who initiated an action, what was done and when. That is also how greytHR NAVOS is designed – operating within existing roles and permissions, with confirm-before-act safeguards and audit logging.
Governance also cannot be something organisations configure once and forget. Models get updated, integrations quietly widen their scope, and default permissions expand over time – so access and controls need to be reviewed on a regular cadence as AI use cases grow, not just at deployment.
If those foundations are in place, organisations can allow AI to take on much more work without losing visibility, control or accountability.
With increasing adoption of work-from-anywhere and hybrid working models, what has been the impact on greytHR’s GTM strategy?
Hybrid work has changed what organisations expect from HR technology, and that has changed our go-to-market conversation as well.
Earlier, the entry point could often be a specific operational need – payroll, attendance or leave. Today, the conversation is much broader. HR and business leaders are looking at how consistently they can run people operations across locations, how easily employees can access HR services, and how much visibility managers have when teams are distributed.
That has moved our GTM approach from a largely function-led conversation to a more platform-led one. Cloud access, mobile self-service, and connected workflows are no longer just product features – they are now central to the platform story for distributed workforces.
It has also made employee experience a much bigger part of the buying decision. If a system works well for HR but creates friction for employees or managers, adoption suffers.
So the shift for us has been quite clear – from leading with individual HR processes to showing how a connected platform can help organisations run their workforce with less friction across locations.
What are greytHR’s unique differentiators over competitors in a crowded SaaS space?
What sets greytHR apart is the combination of deep HR domain expertise, a full-suite platform and AI built into the experience. We have spent more than three decades understanding payroll, statutory compliance and workforce management, particularly the complexities of the Indian market.
That foundation becomes even more valuable in the AI era, because useful AI needs strong context and a reliable system of record underneath it. greytHR NAVOS builds on that foundation, allowing users to move from intent to action through natural language, while working within the platform’s existing workflows, roles and permissions. AI capabilities across the platform also support areas such as recruitment, attendance, payroll and expenses.
At the same time, depth only matters if the platform remains practical to use. We have focused on making greytHR accessible, scalable and easy for organisations to adopt as they grow.
So our differentiation is not one feature. It is the combination of compliance depth, a full-suite platform, scale and AI grounded in real HR workflows – all working together to make complex HR simpler.
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