Somya Kapoor is CEO of IFS Loops, formed when TheLoops joined IFS in 2025. She’s spent her career leading technology strategy and enterprise transformation at global companies like SAP and ServiceNow, and at startups where speed and execution matter more than process.
Before IFS Loops, Somya co-founded TheLoops, an agentic AI platform built to solve real operational problems with measurable outcomes. She’s been building and deploying AI solutions since 2016, which gives her a concrete sense of what actually works in enterprise environments versus what sounds good in demos.
Her approach to agentic AI is grounded in practicality: governance matters, integration with systems of record matters, and deployment has to work in industries where failure costs millions. At IFS Loops, Somya focuses on helping enterprises move from AI experimentation to production-scale deployment. Digital Workers that improve productivity, consistency, and reliability in mission-critical operations. Not pilots. Production.
In an exclusive conversation with CIO Magazine, Somya talks about the shift from traditional automation to agentic AI, and how enterprises must move beyond experimentation to real-world execution. She shares insights on why change management remains the biggest hurdle in digital transformation, and how breaking down operational silos is critical for speed and efficiency. She also reflects on building technology that delivers measurable outcomes, the importance of governance in AI deployment, and why practical innovation always outperforms hype.
Your journey into leading IFS Loops is quite interesting. What were some of the defining moments that shaped your career path?
I’ve been an entrepreneur from the very beginning, even when I was inside large companies. At SAP and ServiceNow, I gravitated toward incubation roles, spinning out new products, building new teams, and taking ideas to market. I wasn’t climbing a ladder, I was building things. That was always what drove me.
Moving into startups was a natural progression. It gave me the freedom to go further, to identify a problem no one had fully solved and build something from the ground up to solve it. What I kept seeing was a gap in customer experience: companies were investing heavily in frontline CX, but the real friction lived in backend operations. Customers weren’t failing because of bad service reps, they were failing because the systems and context behind those reps couldn’t keep up. That insight became the foundation for Loops, a platform built to bring context and operational intelligence to the people and systems that actually resolve customer problems.
The validation came in a powerful way. IFS was a customer of Loops’ agentic platform, they were using it, and seeing its value firsthand, and that relationship led to Loops being acquired by IFS. That’s the kind of outcome that confirms you were solving a real problem for real customers.
At its core, my career has always been about that: find the problem, build the solution, get it in front of customers who need it, and then drive the momentum to scale it.
From your perspective, what are the biggest challenges organizations face today when trying to optimize their processes and systems?
The biggest challenge isn’t lack of technology. It’s change management.
Organizations have historically been very good at maintaining silos, defining processes around them, building teams to scale within them, and structuring data and systems to support that model. And for a long time, that worked. But that model is breaking down.
The pace at which technology is evolving means organizations can no longer afford to optimize in isolation. The silos that once created structure are now creating friction, between systems that can’t share context, teams that can’t move in sync, and processes that weren’t designed for the speed the market now demands.
That’s why change management has become the defining challenge. It’s not enough to deploy new technology and expect transformation. Organizations need to invest in upskilling their people, expanding their exposure to new ways of working, and building a culture that treats change as a capability rather than a disruption. The companies that will win aren’t the ones that adopt technology the fastest, they’re the ones that build organizations agile enough to absorb change and execute with confidence in an environment that will keep evolving.
AI is rapidly reshaping industries. How do you see it influencing the way businesses approach automation and operational efficiency in your domain?
AI is evolving into Agentic AI, and that evolution is forcing a fundamental shift, not just in how businesses operate, but in what automation actually means.
For the past decade, industrial automation meant either brittle RPA that broke with any process change, or AI co-pilots that suggested actions but left humans to execute. Both had real limitations. Neither solved the core problem: coordination delays and manual handoffs that quietly drain capacity and slow down the business.
What’s different now is agentic AI. Systems that can execute complete workflows autonomously, with the governance, auditability, and integration that industrial environments actually demand. This isn’t AI as an assistant. It’s AI as an operator.
The businesses moving fastest aren’t using AI to generate better recommendations. They’re deploying Digital Workers that own workflows end-to-end, procurement, inventory replenishment, dispatch coordination, order management. These aren’t suggestion engines sitting alongside human processes. They are the process.
That’s the real shift. From AI that informs to AI that executes. From automation that assists to infrastructure that operates. And in domains like field service, supply chain, and asset management, that distinction is everything, because the cost of slow execution isn’t just inefficiency, it’s lost customers, missed SLAs, and compounding operational debt.
The organizations that understand this aren’t asking “how do we use AI?” They’re asking “what can we now hand off entirely?” That’s a fundamentally different question, and it leads to a fundamentally different business.
At IFS Loops, what are some key initiatives or milestones that you are particularly proud of?
Several things stand out.
The first is the speed at which we are developing and delivering, and doing it in lockstep with customers. Every Digital Worker we deploy is co-developed with the customer it serves. Kitron, Ependion, Kodiak Gas, CDF and KLN Family Brands are running Digital Workers in live operations, delivering measurable results within weeks. Not pilots — production. That’s real validation in environments where failure costs millions.
That momentum is also changing the commercial motion. Sales cycles are getting faster, and customers are coming back for upgrades within the same quarter after seeing results. That doesn’t happen unless you’re solving real problems.
What underpins all of this is how we think about the Digital Worker itself. We start from outcomes they want to see: what does a specific role need to drive to deliver value? From there, we rethink entire workflows, breaking beyond data silos to connect context, decisions, and actions across the organization.
And now with Agent Studio, we’ve put that power directly in our customers’ hands. They can adapt, test, and monitor their Digital Workers themselves through plain text-based instructions. No code, no developer bottlenecks. Just business knowledge translated directly into operational execution.
But what I’m most proud of is the team. Building technology, the right way, with governance, auditability, and reliability from day one requires real discipline. This team has that. And that’s what makes everything else possible.
As a leader, how do you balance innovation with practicality, especially in an environment where new technologies emerge constantly?
I don’t think innovation and practicality are opposites. The most innovative solutions are often the most practical. The balance comes down to one question: does this solve a real operational problem that costs our customers money, time, or capacity?
Because customers don’t buy technology, they buy outcomes. If you can’t draw a straight line from the innovation to a business result, it’s not ready. Full stop.
That clarity matters more than ever right now. Technology moves so fast that it’s easy to chase capabilities instead of outcomes. We’ve been building AI since 2016, through multiple hype cycles. What I’ve learned is that speed of innovation means nothing without adoption. The most sophisticated technology that sits unused is just technical debt with good marketing.
And in industrial environments, there’s another dimension that most people underestimate — governance. Innovation without governance isn’t innovation, it’s risk. The ability to audit, control, and trust what AI does is what separates deployable from theoretical. That’s not a constraint on innovation, it’s what makes innovation stick in production.
The technology that lasts is the technology that works when it’s live, under pressure, in a messy real-world environment. Not the technology that gets the most buzz.
Practical innovation wins. Every single time.
Outside of work, what interests or activities help you recharge and maintain perspective?
Movement is in my DNA. Growing up in India and the Middle East, studying in the U.S., and working globally, I’ve never stayed still for long. Travel isn’t just how I recharge, it’s how I think. New environments, unexpected conversations, different cultures navigating the same fundamental challenges, there’s no better way to stress-test your assumptions than putting yourself somewhere unfamiliar. Every trip leaves me with a sharper perspective on what we’re building and why it matters.
At heart, I’m an obsessive technologist. I can’t help it. New tools, emerging solutions, the latest gadgets, I have to get my hands on them. There’s something about the moment you pick up a new piece of technology and immediately start imagining what it unlocks that never gets old for me. I was that person coding C++ in 10th grade, and honestly, not much has changed. That curiosity is what keeps me sharp. When you genuinely love technology, not just what it does, but how it thinks. You develop an instinct for what’s real versus what’s noise. In a world moving as fast as ours, that instinct is everything.
And then there’s the work I care most deeply about outside of IFS Loops: advancing women in enterprise technology and AI. I mentor, speak, and advocate actively in that space, not as an obligation, but because I’ve seen firsthand what diverse leadership unlocks. The best organizations aren’t just the most technically capable. They’re the most human. Keeping that front and center reminds me that what we’re building is always bigger than the product.
What advice would you offer to young professionals who aspire to build a career in technology and leadership?
Three things, and I mean these genuinely, not as platitudes.
First, go where the hard problems are. Don’t optimize for titles, visibility, or the most prestigious logo on your resume. Optimize for difficulty. Seek out the problems that actually matter to the business, the ones nobody has fully solved, the ones where failure is visible and success is measurable. That’s where real expertise is built. And expertise, not positioning, is what opens doors that stay open.
Second, take risks while you’re young enough to absorb them. Change roles, change industries, change geographies if you have to. Don’t let comfort become a cage. Every time you step into something unfamiliar, a new function, a new domain, a new type of problem, you’re compounding your perspective in a way that specialists never do. The best leaders I know aren’t the ones who went deepest in one lane. They’re the ones who crossed enough lanes to understand how everything connects. Failure at this stage isn’t a setback. It’s tuition. Pay it willingly and move forward faster because of it.
Third, and this one I feel most personally, if you’re a woman in technology, stop apologizing for being good at what you do. Early in my career I thought I needed to soften my directness, make my ambition more palatable, and take up less space. I don’t anymore. The world doesn’t need more women who are good at technology and leadership but are hesitant to own it. Focus on execution. Deliver results. Build credibility through output, not optics. Don’t wait for permission or for someone to notice you’re ready.
The door was never locked. You just have to build your own key, and have the confidence to use it.
And look, this might sound cliché, but I always come back to Steve Jobs. Stay hungry. Stay foolish. It’s two sentences that have never stopped being true. The moment you think you’ve figured it out is the moment you stop growing. Stay curious enough to keep asking questions and bold enough to keep taking chances. That combination never goes out of style.