Artificial Intelligence is no more a buzzword. It has grown over the years to be the most disruptive technological trend in recent years, with tech behemoths racing to prove their supremacy in this space. Its evident, that the future race for tech is dependent on pretty much who takes over this industry.

Across all the frenzy that we are seeing around AI, where does India really stand in this space? Tech outsourcing has always been a strong forte of India, especially in the space of enterprise technology servicing. In this independent study, we try to bring in some metrics around AI industry in India. We look at AI in India as an industry from a very bird’s eye view perspective – without dwelling into the nitty gritty of how it is shaping up but more on what the numbers are telling us.

Also, an important piece to keep in mind while reading these numbers is that AI has a lot of overlap with Analytics/ Data Science industry; atleast the underlying algorithms and methodologies. So, the numbers might also reflect some biases towards analytics industry as well as rebranding of a lot of data science work into being called as AI. Yet, the whole idea to do this study, is to put some sense into the current chaos around AI.

Key Trends-

• Artificial Intelligence Industry in India is currently estimated to be $180 Million annually in revenues.
• There are approximately 29 Thousand AI professionals in India.

AI Professionals in India-

• The average work experience of AI professionals in India is 6.6 years.
• Around 2,400 fresher were added to AI workforce in India this year.
• Almost 55% AI professionals in India have a work experience less than 5 years.
• Top universities/ schools that AI professionals in India graduate from are

University of Mumbai
BITS, Pilani
IIT, Kharagpur
University of Pune
IIT, Delhi
IIT, Bombay
IIT, Kanpur
Delhi University (321)
IIT, Roorkee

• Almost 38% of AI professionals in India are employed with large sized companies – with more than 10K total employee base.
• Mid size organizations (total employee base in range of 200-10K) employ 30% of all AI professionals in India.
• Startups (less than 200 employee base) employees 33% of AI professionals in India.

AI Companies in India

• More than 800 companies in India claim to work on AI in some form. This includes a small number of companies into products and a larger chunk offering either offshore, recruitment and training services.
• Moreover, the number of AI companies in India are still very few in number, compared to the strength of AI companies around the globe. In fact, India accounts for just 6% of global AI companies.
• On an average, Indian AI companies have 188 employees on their payroll.
• Almost 84% of AI companies in India have less than 50 employees.

AI Salaries in India

• The average salary in AI Professionals in India for year 2017 is INR 14 Lacs across all experience level and skill sets.
• On average, AI professionals receive around 20% higher salaries than Analytics/ Data Science professionals in India.
• Almost 42% of AI professionals have salaries under 6Lakhs.
• 27% AI professionals in India earn in the salary bracket of 10-25L and almost 5% AI professionals earn more than 50L.

AI Jobs in India

• While, it is difficult to ascertain the exact number of AI jobs openings; by our estimates, close to 4,000 positions related to AI are currently available to be filled in India.
• The top 5 skillsets that AI Employers are looking for are Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Neural Networks, Analytics, Pattern Recognition.
• Compared to worldwide estimates, India contributes just 7% of open jobs opening currently. The no. of jobs in India are likely to increase much faster vs. the rest of the world as more AI related projects get outsourced to India due to lack of skills across the world.
• 10 leading organizations with the most number of AI opening this year are – Accenture, Wipro, Adobe, JPMorgan, Accenture, Amazon, SAP, L&T Infotech, Nvidia & Intel.
• In terms of cities, Bengaluru accounts for around 37% of AI jobs in India.
• Delhi/ NCR comes second contributing 23% AI jobs in India and approximately 13% of AI jobs are from Mumbai.

• Banking & Financial sector is the biggest influencer in AI job market. 47% of all jobs posted on AI were from the banking sector.
• E-commerce account for 21% of AI jobs.