en.Wedoany.com Reported - US-based IBM and India's national artificial intelligence portal, IndiaAI, jointly released a research report titled "From Promise to Momentum: How AI is Reshaping India's Economic Future" in New Delhi on May 13. Based on an in-depth survey of 1,500 Indian business executives, the report shows that artificial intelligence could contribute over $500 billion to the Indian economy by 2030. However, only 15% of Indian enterprises have achieved scaled AI deployment, and 72% of surveyed companies admit they lag behind global peers in AI adoption. Sandip Patel, Managing Director of IBM India and South Asia, stated bluntly at the launch event that India stands at the tipping point of the AI revolution, but a deep chasm remains between ambition and actual implementation that needs to be systematically bridged.

The study was jointly conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value and IndiaAI, surveying C-suite executives and department heads responsible for cloud and AI strategy, supplemented by a pulse survey of 405 additional executives. 80% of surveyed business leaders consider AI investment indispensable for business development, but cite trust barriers, data complexity, and skills shortages as primary challenges. Specifically, 65% of enterprises view data quality and governance as the biggest obstacle to scaling AI, 58% are hampered by a lack of teams with practical AI capabilities, and another 47% point out that internal data silos severely hinder the training and iteration of AI models. Finance, manufacturing, retail, and healthcare are identified as the four industries where AI's economic contribution will be most prominent, with the financial services sector alone expected to derive over $120 billion in value from AI by 2030.

The AI adoption rate among Indian small and medium-sized enterprises is far lower than that of large corporations, constituting the main reason for the overall data gap. The research reveals that among enterprises with fewer than 500 employees, only 7% have initiated AI projects, yet these enterprises contribute nearly one-third of India's manufacturing output. IBM puts forward three specific recommendations in the report: accelerate AI skills investment for the entire society, establish an open and trustworthy AI governance framework, and promote cross-industry co-creation of AI use cases. IBM itself has committed to training 1 million AI talents in India by the end of 2026, having already reached over 600,000 learners through its SkillBuild platform, and is collaborating with India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to set up AI labs in multiple universities.

IndiaAI CEO Abhishek Singh stated that this report provides a quantitative benchmark for Indian policymakers, and IndiaAI is advancing the establishment of a national-level AI dataset platform to lower the data acquisition threshold for SMEs. The Indian government has approved a budget of 103.7 billion rupees for the national AI mission, to be used for building public computing infrastructure and supporting local AI startups. On the investment front, India's AI sector attracted over $15 billion in venture capital in 2025, a year-on-year increase of about 70%, but the absolute scale is only one-eighth of that in the US, indicating a structural gap between capital supply and market potential. Gargi Dasgupta, head of IBM India Research Lab, pointed out that India possesses the world's largest pool of technical talent, but the supply-demand ratio for AI-related skills is only 1:12, and the skills gap will become a more urgent constraint than capital over the next three years.

The report further quantifies the reshaping effect of AI on India's labor market. By 2030, approximately 42 million Indian workers will need reskilling in AI-related skills, while AI will simultaneously create about 28 million new types of jobs in manufacturing, services, and agriculture. IBM advises enterprises to establish an internal "AI apprenticeship" system, transforming knowledge workers from traditional roles into designers and reviewers of AI workflows in batches, rather than simply replacing positions. Sandip Patel emphasized that India possesses three major advantages: massive digital infrastructure, a young demographic dividend, and a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem. However, only by accelerating simultaneously on the three tracks of trust, skills, and open innovation can AI's economic potential be transformed from forecast figures into actual growth.

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