India’s AI ambitions could add more than $500 billion to the country’s economy by 2030, according to a new joint study by IBM and IndiaAI, even as a majority of Indian enterprises admit they are lagging behind global peers in AI adoption.
The report, titled ‘From promise to power: How AI is redefining India’s economic future’, highlights a widening gap between India’s AI ambitions and enterprise readiness. While 80% of Indian business leaders believe AI investments will directly influence the country’s GDP growth, 72% of organisations surveyed acknowledged they lag behind global competitors in adopting AI at scale.
The findings come at a time when India is aggressively positioning itself as a global AI powerhouse through investments in digital infrastructure, sovereign AI capabilities, skilling initiatives, and enterprise modernisation.
According to the study, 73% of surveyed executives believe India will emerge as a leading global AI nation by 2030, driven by rapid advances in AI adoption across industries and growing government-industry collaboration.
Speaking at the launch of the report, S Krishnan, Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, said India is increasingly shaping the global AI narrative rather than simply participating in it.
“India is no longer just participating in the global AI conversation; we are helping shape it. Our vision is clear. AI must evolve as an extension of our people’s aspirations, driving inclusive growth and national progress. Guided by our vision of Viksit Bharat, we are advancing a human-centric approach to AI rooted in trust, ethics, and national sovereignty,” he said.
The report identified sovereign and hybrid AI infrastructure as emerging priorities for Indian enterprises, particularly in regulated industries and public systems. About 74% of executives surveyed said control over where data resides is critical, reflecting growing demand for sovereign AI architectures that balance innovation with data governance and national control.
Rather than fully isolated systems, enterprises are increasingly leaning toward hybrid cloud environments that combine domestic control with global innovation ecosystems. Seven in 10 executives said hybrid approaches improve control over data location without substantially increasing costs.
However, infrastructure readiness remains one of the biggest challenges in India’s AI journey.
The study found that 77% of respondents cited a lack of accessible, affordable, and secure cloud infrastructure as a major barrier to AI readiness, while 57% pointed to uneven data quality.
The findings suggest that India’s AI success may depend less on access to advanced models and more on strengthening foundational enterprise data systems and compute infrastructure.
Sandip Patel, Managing Director, IBM India and South Asia, said India’s AI opportunity will ultimately depend on how organisations operationalise AI responsibly and at scale.
“AI has the potential to become one of the most powerful growth engines for India’s economy,” Patel said. “What will set India apart is not just the scale of adoption, but how organisations build trusted AI agents and systems on strong data foundations, hybrid architectures, and a workforce empowered to work alongside AI.”
The study also underscored the scale of India’s looming AI talent challenge.
Currently, only around 30% of employees possess the AI literacy levels businesses say they require. By 2030, enterprises expect that figure to rise to nearly 57%, implying that India may need more than 350 million AI-skilled professionals within the decade.
To bridge the gap, initiatives such as IndiaAI FutureSkills are expanding AI labs and training programs across tier-2 and tier-3 cities, reflecting a broader push to democratise access to AI education and enterprise skilling.
Despite growing enthusiasm around AI, the report showed that most enterprises are still in the early stages of implementation. Only 15% of organisations surveyed are currently scaling AI through significant cross-functional investments, while the remaining 85% continue to operate pilot-stage AI programs.
Governance also remains a concern. Nearly 68% of enterprises cited gaps in AI governance as a barrier to scaling AI adoption, though many companies are beginning to integrate governance frameworks into operational systems.
The study concluded that India’s AI leadership ambitions will depend on how quickly enterprises can move from experimentation to scaled deployment while simultaneously strengthening infrastructure, governance, partnerships, and workforce readiness.
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