Executive Program in AI, ML and Generative AI for Business Transformation
An Executive Certificate Program by Continuing Education Centre (CEC), IIT Roorkee
Don't just watch AI change your industry. Be the leader who drives it.
A 12-week live online and campus-immersion program by Continuing Education Centre (CEC), IIT Roorkee and Zero Zeta, designed to help experienced professionals, managers, and business leaders use AI to improve decisions, automate workflows, and drive measurable growth.
IIT Roorkee • Estd. 1847
Historic James Thomason Building, IIT Roorkee
Everyone Is Talking About AI. Very Few Leaders Know How to Turn It Into Business Results.
Across every industry, professionals are already experimenting with tools like ChatGPT and Copilot to write emails or summarize documents. But knowing how to use a chatbot is not the same as leading with AI.
4 Questions Companies & Boards Expect Leaders to Answer Today
The gap between companies that succeed with AI and those that stall comes down to one thing: leaders who understand both business and AI. Whether you lead a team, a function, a client account, or an entire company, this program equips you to bridge that gap with confidence.
What Global Research Shows
Why Most AI Pilots Fail to Scale and Create Business Value
When enterprise AI initiatives stall after an initial demo, the root cause is rarely the underlying AI model. It almost always comes down to three leadership and execution gaps:
The Scale Problem
The AI pilot or chatbot worked in an isolated team experiment, but was never architected to connect safely with real company data, documents, and cross-functional systems.
The Adoption Problem
Functional managers and teams were handed AI licenses, but were never equipped to redesign everyday processes, set human-in-the-loop guardrails, or run AI workflows independently.
The ROI Problem
Leadership lacked a clear financial framework to evaluate cost per completed task vs. token costs, compare build vs. buy options, and prove measurable P&L impact to the board.
Not a Basic Awareness Webinar. Not a Coding Bootcamp. A Practical Leadership Program.
Most AI courses fall into two extremes: either they give you high-level buzzwords you cannot apply on Monday morning, or they dive into complex Python programming meant for junior software developers. This program is built specifically for experienced professionals (8+ years experience) who make business decisions every day:
Who Should Join This Program?
This program is designed for experienced professionals, functional heads, and business leaders who want to upgrade their AI leadership capability, accelerate their career trajectory, and drive real transformation in their organizations.
CXOs, Presidents & Vice Presidents
Senior executives steering company strategy, digital transformation, and long-term growth.
Founders, Entrepreneurs & Business Owners
Leaders looking to automate operations, scale faster, and build an AI-driven competitive edge.
Business Unit Heads & P&L Owners
Leaders accountable for revenue growth, cost efficiency, and measurable ROI from technology investments.
Directors, GMs & Department Heads
Senior professionals leading large teams who want to modernize workflows and boost departmental productivity.
Senior Managers & Transformation Leaders
Ambitious leaders spearheading strategic initiatives, change management, and operational excellence.
Consultants, Client Partners & Delivery Leaders
Professionals in IT services, GCCs, and advisory firms who guide clients on AI strategy, feasibility, and delivery.
Product, Project & Program Leaders
Leaders managing digital products, enterprise platforms, and cross-functional implementation roadmaps.
Functional Leaders Across Every Domain
Senior professionals across Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Finance, Banking, Operations, Supply Chain, Procurement, HR, Quality, and IT.
Three Common Leadership Paths into This Program
Cross-functional peer cohort across industriesThe Business Unit, P&L & Executive Leader
CXOs, Founders, VPs, Business Unit Heads, and General Managers who need a clear financial and strategic blueprint to prioritize AI investments, govern risk, and drive measurable P&L returns across the organization.
The Functional, Operations & Delivery Head
Directors, Department Heads, and Senior Managers across Operations, Supply Chain, Finance, Sales, Marketing, HR, and Quality looking to eliminate manual bottlenecks and automate team workflows without writing code.
The Digital Transformation, IT, GCC & Advisory Leader
Consultants, Client Partners, Product & Program Heads, and GCC Leaders bridging business priorities with technical teams to evaluate AI vendors, architect enterprise Copilots (RAG), and lead adoption.
What You Will Be Able to Do by the End of 12 Weeks
Nine practical career and business capabilities you will take back to your role and organization:
1. Speak the Language of AI with Authority
Understand AI, Machine Learning, Generative AI, LLMs, RAG, and AI Agents clearly, so you can lead boardroom, client, and team discussions with confidence.
2. Spot High-ROI Opportunities in Your Function
Identify where AI can save hours, cut costs, improve accuracy, or unlock revenue in your specific department or industry.
3. Use Modern AI Tools Hands-On (Without Coding)
Work directly with leading AI tools and no-code platforms to analyze data, automate routine tasks, and speed up decision-making.
4. Build Custom AI Assistants Over Company Knowledge
Learn how organizations safely connect AI to internal PDFs, policies, contracts, and databases (using RAG) to get accurate, reliable answers.
5. Redesign Workflows with AI Agents
Move beyond simple prompting to design multi-step AI workflows and autonomous agents that handle repetitive cross-team processes.
6. Drive Confident Build, Buy, or Partner Decisions
Evaluate AI software vendors, off-the-shelf copilots, and custom solutions with clear judgment on cost, security, and value.
7. Lead Technical & Cross-Functional Teams Effectively
Ask the right questions of data scientists, IT teams, and external vendors, and bridge the gap between tech and business.
8. Manage AI Risk, Privacy, and ROI
Put the right guardrails in place for data privacy, accuracy, and compliance, and build a clear business case for CFO or leadership approval.
9. Take Back a Working AI Project & IIT Roorkee Credential
Graduate with a demonstrable AI solution built for your business and an official Certificate from CEC, IIT Roorkee.
Hands-On Exposure to the AI Models & Platforms Reshaping Business
You do not need a programming background to master modern AI. Through live demonstrations, guided walkthroughs, and practical exercises, you will explore how frontier AI models, predictive ML, and no-code agent platforms solve real business challenges:
OpenAI GPT-4o & Reasoning Models
Advanced business problem-solving, structured spreadsheet and data analysis, multimodal synthesis, and designing custom role-specific GPT assistants.
Anthropic Claude (Sonnet & Opus)
Deep review of long contracts, policies, and financial reports, executive memo synthesis, and interactive business prototyping with high precision.
Microsoft 365 Copilot & Google Gemini
Embedding AI directly into everyday enterprise workflows across spreadsheets, executive presentations, meetings, and cross-team collaboration.
Perplexity AI & Deep Research Engines
Real-time, source-verified market intelligence, competitor tracking, regulatory synthesis, and boardroom briefing preparation with citations.
Enterprise Knowledge (RAG) & Predictive ML
Connecting AI securely to internal company documents, SOPs, and databases without hallucinations, plus no-code Machine Learning for forecasting and churn prediction.
LangChain & No-Code AI Agent Platforms
Designing multi-step AI workflows and autonomous agents that connect with CRMs, ERPs, spreadsheets, and emails to execute end-to-end tasks.
(All models and platforms are explored from a practical business and decision-making perspective, with zero coding required.)
Program Structure & Modules: A Clear Journey from AI Basics to Real Business Impact
The curriculum is structured into 8 easy-to-follow modules over 12 weeks (65 hours). Each module builds logically, starting from clear business foundations and Large Language Models (LLMs), and moving step-by-step toward predictive analytics, workflow automation, enterprise RAG copilots, AI agents, and your mentored business capstone project.
Detailed 8-Module Executive Syllabus
Download Full Syllabus (PDF)Module 01Demystifying AI for Business Leaders: Technologies, Applications and Opportunities
What This Module Is About: Build a crystal-clear foundation across the entire AI landscape in plain business language, so you know what each technology does, where it fits, and how top companies use it.
- The Complete AI Picture: How Traditional Analytics, Predictive Machine Learning (ML), Generative AI, and Autonomous AI Agents differ, and when to use which.
- How AI Creates Business Value Today: Real-world examples across IT, Banking & Finance, Sales, Marketing, Operations, Supply Chain, HR, Retail, and Manufacturing.
- Live Walkthroughs of Modern AI: Seeing Generative AI, knowledge retrieval (RAG), and AI agents solve real business problems live in class.
- Building an AI-First Leadership Mindset: Why some AI projects fail while others deliver massive ROI, and how to avoid common leadership traps.
Module 02Understanding Large Language Models (LLMs), AI Tools, Prompting, and Token Economics
What This Module Is About: Master the everyday building blocks of modern Generative AI: how Large Language Models (LLMs) actually process information, how to write structured executive prompts, how to choose the right AI tools, and how token vs. task economics impact business budgets.
- How LLMs Work (Jargon-Free): Understanding tokens, context windows, reasoning models vs. fast models, temperature, and why hallucinations happen in plain business terms.
- Structured Prompting for Business Leaders: Practical prompting techniques (role-setting, chain-of-thought reasoning, few-shot examples, and output formatting) for high-stakes executive work.
- Evaluating Today's Flagship AI Tools: Hands-on comparison of OpenAI GPT-4o & reasoning models, Anthropic Claude Sonnet & Opus, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Google Gemini, and Perplexity AI.
- Token Economics vs. Task Economics: Understanding API token pricing, hidden retry and human verification costs, Small Language Models (SLMs), and measuring cost per completed business task.
Module 03Turning Business Data into Smarter Predictions and Decisions (Machine Learning in Practice)
What This Module Is About: Learn how businesses use their existing data (from Excel, CRM, ERP, finance, or operations) to predict future trends, reduce errors, and make faster, smarter decisions without writing code.
- Translating Business Problems into AI Opportunities: How to frame everyday challenges, such as sales forecasting, customer retention, cost control, or quality improvement, as solvable AI projects.
- Is Your Data Ready for AI?: How to assess data quality across spreadsheets and company software, and fix common data silos across departments.
- Predictive AI for Planning & Forecasting: How Machine Learning and modern AI help forecast demand, revenue, inventory, pricing, and resource needs.
- Improving Quality & Make/Buy Decisions: Using AI to catch errors early, reduce rework, and decide when to buy an off-the-shelf tool vs. customize a model.
Module 04Redesigning Workflows and Automating Everyday Operations with AI
What This Module Is About: Discover how to move beyond individual productivity tips and redesign how work flows across your team or department to save hours, cut operational waste, and boost output.
- Finding Hidden Bottlenecks in Your Work: Spotting manual handoffs, repetitive reporting, slow approvals, and process delays that slow your team down.
- The Workflow Redesign Playbook: How to rethink existing business processes around AI rather than just bolting a chatbot onto an outdated workflow.
- Human + AI Collaboration: Designing practical workflows where AI handles the heavy lifting (drafting, analyzing, sorting, summarizing) while humans control key decisions.
- Applying & Measuring AI Workflows: Hands-on examples with OpenAI, Copilot, and automation tools, plus simple methods to track time and cost savings.
Module 05Applying Generative AI to Customer Growth, Document Intelligence, and Enterprise Copilots (RAG)
What This Module Is About: Learn how to combine data insights with Generative AI to personalize customer engagement, analyze complex business documents in seconds, and build secure AI assistants trained on your company's own knowledge.
- AI for Customer Growth & Retention: How businesses use AI to segment customers, predict churn, score leads, and personalize marketing and sales outreach at scale.
- Instant Document & Contract Intelligence: Using Generative AI to extract key insights, risks, and summaries from long PDFs, financial reports, legal contracts, and proposals.
- Building Your Company Knowledge Assistant (RAG): A non-technical guide to Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), connecting LLMs safely to private company documents for source-backed answers.
- Role-Specific Copilots & Data Privacy: Designing dedicated Copilots for Sales, Finance, HR, and Operations while protecting company confidentiality and IP.
Module 06Foundations of Agentic AI: Building Intelligent Agents to Automate Business Tasks
What This Module Is About: Understand the biggest leap in AI today, Agentic AI, where AI moves from simply answering prompts to acting as an autonomous digital teammate that can plan, reason, and complete multi-step business tasks.
- Chatbots vs. Copilots vs. AI Agents: A clear, jargon-free explanation of how AI Agents think, remember context, break down goals, and take action across steps.
- How an AI Agent System Works: Understanding goals, memory, planning, action loops, and feedback in everyday business terms.
- High-Impact Use Cases for AI Agents: Real-world agent applications in customer onboarding, market research, financial reconciliation, vendor follow-ups, IT, and HR.
- Human Oversight & Safety Guardrails: Setting clear boundaries, approval checkpoints, and safety rules so autonomous agents remain reliable and controlled.
Module 07Building AI Agents and Automating Business Workflows (No-Code)
What This Module Is About: See how AI agents connect with real workplace tools (like spreadsheets, emails, databases, and business software) to execute end-to-end workflows, and practice building them without writing code.
- How AI Connects to Business Software: Understanding how AI agents safely read data, use business tools, update records, and trigger actions across systems.
- Building Multi-Step AI Workflows (No-Code): Guided walkthroughs showing how multiple AI steps work together to research, draft proposals, check policies, and prepare approvals.
- Ensuring Clean, Reliable Outputs: How to guide AI systems to produce structured tables, executive reports, and verified outputs without guesswork.
- Quality Checks & Verification: Practical ways to check AI agent outputs, prevent hallucinations, and maintain audit trails across departmental workflows.
Module 08Leading AI Implementation: Measuring ROI, Managing Risks, and Scaling Business Impact
What This Module Is About: Bring everything together as a senior leader: learn how to evaluate AI quality, control AI task costs, manage legal/compliance risks, win team buy-in, and present a winning AI business case to your leadership or clients.
- Testing & Evaluating AI Solutions: How business leaders judge whether an AI tool or prototype is accurate, reliable, and ready for real-world rollout, with human review fallbacks.
- Calculating AI Cost & Business ROI: Understanding the real economics of running AI (cost per completed task vs. token costs) and building a credible ROI scorecard for your CEO, CFO, or client.
- Responsible AI, Ethics & Compliance: Navigating data protection laws, ethical AI use, vendor accountability, and internal company AI governance policies.
- Leading People Through AI Change: How to overcome employee resistance, upskill your team, and scale a successful AI pilot across your organization.
Graduate With a Working AI Prototype and a 100-Day AI Transformation Blueprint
A cornerstone of this program is the Mentored Business Capstone Studio. Instead of sitting for theoretical exams, you will apply every module to a real business challenge from your own company, industry, or functional domain and leave with both a working solution and an executive rollout roadmap.
Select a real workflow bottleneck, growth opportunity, or operational problem from your own role or choose from 6 guided tracks.
Refine your problem framing, data readiness, and AI architecture directly with IIT Roorkee faculty and Zero Zeta AI engineers.
Iteratively build your custom knowledge assistant (RAG), redesigned workflow, or no-code AI agent across the 12-week journey.
Pair your working AI prototype with a phased 100-day rollout plan, task-level ROI scorecard, and human-in-the-loop governance checklist.
Present your working prototype and boardroom business case for structured feedback before taking it back to your leadership or clients.
Select from 6 practical business tracks below, or bring your own company challenge:
1. Sales, Marketing & Customer Growth Track
- Predict customer churn and build automated retention workflows
- Intelligent lead scoring, deal prioritization, and customer segmentation
- AI copilot for faster RFP/proposal drafting and client pitch preparation
- 24/7 conversational AI agents for customer onboarding, support, and follow-ups
2. Finance, Banking, Audit & Risk Track
- Automated invoice, receipt, and financial document extraction & reconciliation
- Expense anomaly, compliance risk, and fraud pattern detection
- AI assistant for financial report summarization, variance analysis, and board packs
- Cash-flow, revenue, and credit-risk forecasting models
3. Operations, Supply Chain & Procurement Track
- Smart demand forecasting and inventory stock optimization
- AI assistant for vendor quote comparison, contract review, and procurement intelligence
- Service delivery bottleneck analysis and automated SLA tracking workflows
- Quality monitoring, defect reduction, and operational efficiency dashboards
4. IT Services, Consulting, Product & Project Management Track
- Enterprise Knowledge Copilot (RAG) over client documents, SOPs, and technical manuals
- Automated project risk tracker, meeting-to-action workflow, and delivery reporting
- AI-assisted business requirement gathering and solution blueprint generator
- Client AI readiness assessment and transformation roadmap toolkit
5. HR, Talent & Workplace Productivity Track
- AI-powered resume screening, skill-matching, and interview preparation assistant
- 24/7 internal employee helpdesk copilot for HR policies, leave, and onboarding
- Workforce productivity analytics and training/upskilling recommendation engine
- Automated internal communications and performance review synthesis
6. "Bring Your Own Business Challenge"
- Have a specific problem in your company, department, or startup? Bring your own use case!
- Work directly with Zero Zeta AI engineers and IIT Roorkee faculty to design and build a tailored AI prototype and ROI business case for your exact organizational goal.
You are never on your own: Zero Zeta's experienced AI engineers and IIT Roorkee faculty mentor you step-by-step.
Graduate with a working AI prototype and a boardroom-ready 100-Day AI Transformation Blueprint (complete with task-economics ROI and governance guardrails) that you can immediately present to your CEO, CFO, board, or clients.
Where Our Learners Work
Senior professionals and leaders from top global and Indian organizations across IT, BFSI, Consulting, Engineering, Healthcare, and Retail.
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Step-by-Step Support Designed for Busy Working Professionals
A flexible, high-touch executive learning model built around your demanding schedule.
1. Live Interactive Weekend Sessions
Learn directly from IIT Roorkee professors and industry AI practitioners in engaging weekend classes. Ask questions live and discuss real business cases with senior peers across industries.
2. Hands-On Practice Without Coding Stress
Every tool and concept is demonstrated step-by-step using accessible no-code and low-code workflows so you gain real, practical confidence from week one.
3. 1:1 Doubt Clearing & Engineering Mentorship
Stuck on a concept or building your capstone? Get dedicated 1:1 support sessions with Zero Zeta AI engineers and mentors to guide you personally.
4. Full Session Recordings & 6 Months Resource Access
Traveling or have a busy weekend at work? Every live session is recorded and available on your learning portal along with templates, reading guides, and 6 months of access.
Program Coordinators
Delivered in collaboration with IIT Roorkee, this executive program brings together academic credibility and practical business relevance for senior leaders navigating AI-led transformation. The program is coordinated by distinguished faculty from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee.
Prof. Pradeep Jha
Prof. Pradeep Jha is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at IIT Roorkee. He earned his Ph.D. from IIT Kharagpur, specializing in modeling and simulation in continuous casting steelmaking processes.
Before joining IIT Roorkee, he held faculty positions at IIT Guwahati and IIT (ISM) Dhanbad and worked as a Quick Hire Fellow at the National Metallurgical Laboratory, Jamshedpur.
His research expertise spans manufacturing engineering, with a focus on metal casting, metal matrix composites, solidification processing, flow and thermal behavior analysis, and magnetohydrodynamic studies in continuous casting tundishes and molds. He has published extensively, supervised multiple doctoral and master's theses, and led sponsored research and consultancy projects funded by SERB-DST, CSIR, ITC, and SAIL.
Prof. Jha has also contributed significantly to India's digital education initiatives by developing and leading courses on the NPTEL platform. He is an active member of ASME, the Indian Institute of Metals, and the Institute of Indian Foundrymen, and serves as a reviewer for international journals in materials processing and manufacturing.
His work reflects a strong commitment to advancing research, education, and industrial applications in mechanical and manufacturing engineering.
Dr. Gaurav Kumar Nayak
Dr. Gaurav Kumar Nayak is an Assistant Professor at the Mehta Family School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, IIT Roorkee, India. He was previously a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center for Research in Computer Vision, University of Central Florida (UCF), USA, where he received the prestigious Preeminent Postdoctoral Program (P3) Award. He completed his Ph.D. from the Department of Computational and Data Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore.
His research interests include Generative AI (with a focus on diffusion models and LLMs) and efficient deep learning techniques such as Knowledge Distillation, Unsupervised Domain Adaptation, Continual Learning, Adversarial Robustness, Federated Learning, and Geo-localization.
He was recently awarded US Research Grants at IIT Roorkee for a Geo-localization project (2024) and an Indoor Place Recognition project (2026), and currently serves as the instructor for a newly introduced postgraduate-level course on Generative AI for M.Tech and Ph.D. students.
He was a finalist for the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (QIF) India 2020, was selected for the Doctoral Consortium at WACV 2022, and has received several travel grants, including the ICML 2019 Travel Award. Dr. Nayak has published extensively in top-tier machine learning and computer vision conferences and serves as a reviewer for prestigious venues such as NeurIPS, AAAI, WACV, BMVC, and several journals. More details: https://tinyurl.com/GauravNayak
Program Faculty
Learn from AI researchers, experienced practitioners, and leading academic minds.
Dr. Neel Mani, PhD
Dr. Neel Mani, PhD, is an AI researcher and academic leader with experience across Generative AI, machine learning, NLP, digital health, agriculture, and knowledge systems. He has held academic and research roles across institutions including Dublin City University, University College Dublin, Amity University, Dev Sanskriti Vishwavidyalaya, and Swami Rama Himalayan University. His work combines applied AI research with real-world implementation across enterprise and societal use cases, bringing a practical perspective to business transformation, AI adoption, and cross-functional decision-making.
Vineet Srivastava
Vineet Srivastava leads Strategy for AI Academic and Research Programs at Zero Zeta. An alumnus of IIT Roorkee, he brings more than two decades of leadership across enterprise digital transformation, AI strategy consulting, and executive capability building. Vineet works closely with leadership teams, corporate boards, and institutions on AI readiness, ROI modeling, and navigating the operational transition from pilot experimentation to enterprise-scale deployment.
Gaurav Gupta
Gaurav Gupta is the Chief Technology Officer at Zero Zeta and Guest Faculty at South Asian University. An alumnus of IIT Roorkee and IIM Bangalore, he brings over two decades of engineering and technology leadership in enterprise data science, AI systems architecture, and industrial automation. At Zero Zeta, Gaurav leads the engineering of enterprise AI platforms, copilots, and multi-agent systems, bridging deep technical foundations with executive decision-making.
Certificate of Completion from Continuing Education Centre (CEC), IIT Roorkee
Enhance your executive profile and LinkedIn credentials with an official Certificate of Completion from one of India's premier, oldest technical institutions.
- Recognized Institutional Credential: Official Certificate from Continuing Education Centre (CEC), IIT Roorkee
- Career & Leadership Validation: Demonstrates your mastery of AI, Machine Learning, Generative AI, and Business Transformation
- Qualification Criteria: Minimum 70% attendance across sessions + completion of interactive assessments, quizzes, and assignments
- Practical Portfolio Proof: Paired with your mentored business AI capstone project
Certification & Requirements
Participants who satisfy the attendance and course assessment criteria will receive an official Certificate of Completion from the Continuing Education Centre (CEC), IIT Roorkee.
Assessment Components & Support
Evaluation Pillars:
- Live class interaction
- Interactive quizzes
- Practical assignments & capstone
Participant Support:
- Session recordings
- 6 months portal access
- Reading material & e-resources
- 1:1 doubt clearing & mentorship
- Post-program guidance
