Why India's Tech Giants Believe AI Has Reached an Inflection Point

For some time now, India’s AI story has revolved around talent, research labs and pilot projects. Today, the conversation has shifted decisively towards deployment. Across boardrooms, startups, public institutions and government, AI is increasingly being viewed as critical infrastructure rather than an experimental technology.

That transition is echoed by some of the country’s most influential technology leaders. Whether it is Google investing in digital public infrastructure, Microsoft expanding AI capacity and skilling, Adobe building globally used AI products from India, SAP driving enterprise AI innovation, or Zoom embedding AI into everyday workflows, a common thread emerges: India’s AI ecosystem is entering an execution phase.

According to a BCG X and FICCI report, marketing and sales lead at 43%, where organisations are using AI for targeted customer activation, hyper-personalisation, virtual assistance to improve conversions, and rapid creative generation for acquisition and cross-sell campaigns. Operations follow at 37%, driven by applications such as manufacturing process optimisation, quality detection, hazard detection and quality control. Customer service represents 33%, with enterprises implementing conversational AI agents, including chatbots and voice bots. 

Meanwhile, human resources accounts for 17%, with organisations adopting AI-powered talent acquisition and HR service desk automation. Together, these figures highlight that AI is becoming a cross-functional enterprise capability, with adoption extending well beyond IT into core business operations.

Hence, the focus is no longer on proving whether AI works. It is about scaling AI responsibly, building the underlying infrastructure, creating talent at an unprecedented scale, and solving real-world problems across industries.

From Infrastructure to Population-Scale AI

Speaking to AIM, Preeti Lobana, VP and Country Manager, Google India, says the biggest contribution over the past year has been ensuring that AI reaches communities beyond large enterprises.

Under her leadership, Google has strengthened partnerships with academia, healthcare institutions and startups while investing in digital infrastructure that enables AI deployment at scale.

The company has worked with organisations such as AIIMS and Wadhwani AI, while supporting India’s broader digital public infrastructure through healthcare initiatives and open-source technologies.

Google has also prioritised digital trust by launching the Google Safety Engineering Centre (GSEC) in Hyderabad and introducing the Google Safety Charter for India’s AI-led transformation to strengthen online safety.

Lobana says India is entering an entirely new phase of AI adoption.

“The shift in India’s AI landscape is the transition past experiments into the era of real-world substance, establishing a global blueprint for democratic AI where the technology moves from a specialised corporate tool to a population-scale capability multiplier that solves grassroots challenges, creates new economic opportunities, and deploys solutions for critical needs," she highlights.

Her observation reflects a broader industry trend where AI is increasingly becoming part of public services, agriculture, education and healthcare, not merely enterprise productivity.

Microsoft Sees the Rise of AI Public Infrastructure

Microsoft has arguably made one of the largest infrastructure commitments in India’s AI ecosystem.

Over the past year, the company announced a $17.5 billion investment to expand AI infrastructure in India while committing to train 20 million Indians in AI by 2030, with over 5.6 million already trained.

Beyond skilling, Microsoft has focused on reducing anxiety around AI adoption.

Puneet Chandok, President, Microsoft India and South Asia tells AIM that he has personally led more than 100 conversations—from classrooms to corporate boardrooms—to help organisations understand AI’s opportunities rather than fear its impact.

As Chair of the CII AI Council, Chandok has also championed the idea of ‘AI for every Indian’, bringing together policymakers, industry and academia around AI regulation, workforce development and innovation.

He believes India’s next transformation extends beyond Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI).

“India is advancing from digital public infrastructure to AI public infrastructure, with access to unmetered AI intelligence that never sleeps and is embedded across our economy,” Chandok explains.

India is Becoming an AI Product Nation

For years, multinational technology companies viewed India primarily as an engineering hub.

That perception is changing.

Speaking to AIM, Abhigyan Modi, Country Manager, Adobe India and Senior Vice President, Adobe Document Cloud, says India is increasingly contributing to global AI products rather than simply supporting their development.

Over the past year, Adobe’s India teams played a central role in launching the company’s first productivity agent and PDF Spaces within Acrobat, AI-powered capabilities aimed at redefining workplace collaboration and knowledge management.

Adobe also strengthened its presence in India’s AI ecosystem through partnerships, including collaborations with Airtel to provide students free access to Adobe AI tools.

Modi believes India’s role in global AI has fundamentally evolved.

“India is moving beyond being a source of AI talent and implementation services to becoming a global hub for AI innovation, adoption, and digital infrastructure, where new ideas are rapidly adopted, tested across industries, like manufacturing, IT, tech, among others, and transformed into scalable AI-native solutions,” he explains.

His perspective mirrors a growing shift among multinational companies, many of which now view India not merely as a delivery centre but as a strategic location for AI research, engineering and product development.

Enterprise AI is Moving Beyond Pilots

While infrastructure and foundation models dominate headlines, enterprise software companies are seeing another important shift: AI is quietly becoming embedded into everyday work.

For Sameer Raje, General Manager and Head, India and SAARC at Zoom, the past year has focused on integrating AI-powered customer experience tools into real business workflows.

Capabilities such as virtual agents, real-time assistance and AI-driven customer insights are no longer experimental features but operational tools helping businesses improve customer engagement.

Rather than simply increasing productivity, Raje says AI is enabling organisations to move faster while preserving human interaction.

“India’s AI landscape is shifting from experimentation to embedded adoption, where AI is becoming part of everyday workflows to help organisations move from conversations to outcomes with greater speed, context, and intelligence,” Raje believes.

India Wants to Lead Enterprise AI

For Sindhu Gangadharan, Managing Director of SAP Labs India, India’s AI ambitions extend beyond adoption to global leadership.

Over the past year, Gangadharan has contributed to AI policy discussions through the World Economic Forum’s Advisory Council, AI for India 2030, while simultaneously driving AI adoption within SAP.

Gangadharan said SAP’s continued investments in India reflect the country’s growing importance as a global enterprise AI hub.

“Our commitment to India reflects our confidence in the country’s innovation ecosystem. Last year, we inaugurated our 41-acre SAP Labs India Innovation Park in Bengaluru, representing an investment of €194 million. The campus brings together engineering, design, customer co-innovation, and ecosystem collaboration under one roof, creating an environment where ideas can move from concept to product much faster,” she mentions to AIM.

Nearly 70% of SAP Labs India’s workforce has now received AI training through initiatives such as Learning Fest and AI Ignite.

At the product level, SAP Document AI, developed with significant contributions from India, now supports more than 100 languages and powers over 30 SAP business scenarios, demonstrating India’s growing influence on globally deployed enterprise AI systems.

Gangadharan has also strengthened Indo-German collaboration on AI by bringing together policymakers, startups, academia and enterprises.

She believes India’s role in global AI is changing rapidly.

“India is rapidly transitioning from being a consumer of AI to becoming a global leader in building, deploying, and scaling enterprise AI solutions, with a unique opportunity to shape how the world’s businesses harness AI to become more intelligent, resilient, and autonomous,” Gangadharan mentions.