New Delhi: India's spending on artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is expected to reach $10.4 billion by 2028, growing at an annualized rate of 38 per cent from 2023, according to a report released on Thursday.
The joint report by IDC InfoBrief and UiPath revealed that nearly 40 per cent of Indian organizations have already adopted agentic AI, while around 50 per cent are planning to implement it within the next year. These figures highlight India's rapid embrace of advanced automation technologies across industries.
By 2025, AI investments are expected to be largely channeled into building the foundational infrastructure needed to support high-impact, transformative use cases.
The report attributes this surge in adoption to a combination of factors, including a tech-savvy workforce, rapidly growing digital infrastructure, and strong government-backed digital initiatives. Spending on enterprise automation, multilingual AI models, and agentic AI deployments is further propelling the trend.
The benefits are already becoming evident: 80 per cent of Indian companies reported productivity gains from agentic AI, and 73 per cent said it had improved decision-making processes.
The technology is gaining traction particularly in data-intensive sectors such as manufacturing, retail and wholesale, healthcare, and life sciences, where repetitive decision-making is common.
“Agentic automation is rapidly redefining business operations across India,” said DebDeep Sengupta, Area Vice President, South Asia, UiPath. “While enterprises in this region are embracing the full potential of AI agents to streamline workflows and autonomously execute complex business processes, trust and security remain barriers to widespread implementation.”
The report also highlighted the key drivers for adopting agentic AI: 69 per cent of organizations are using it to boost productivity, 59 per cent for personalized customer engagement, and 57 per cent for risk and fraud detection, demonstrating its growing role across both front-end and back-end operations.
“Becoming an AI-fueled business is no longer an option in today’s unpredictable climate. For many organizations, it's fast becoming a strategic necessity,” said Deepika Giri, Associate Vice President, IDC Asia/Pacific.
According to Giri, companies across the Asia-Pacific region are adopting agentic AI and automation at scale, positioning themselves for future-ready growth.