Deloitte India’s Coalesce 2025 was a huge success, with participation from industry leaders, decision-makers and innovators across various sectors. The discussions centred around the theme ‘Define your North Star’, which acts as a guiding principle for organisations to find clarity and anchor their strategy around purpose and meaningful transformation.
Current stage of AI adoption in India
In an era of rapid technological advancements, AI adoption has become more than essential for companies to maintain a competitive edge. According to a Deloitte report, India is emerging as a global leader in adoption of Agentic AI. More than 80 percent of organisations in the country are actively exploring the development of autonomous agents. The interest in AI indicates a substantial shift in the way organisations use AI for innovation and efficiency.
Adoption rates of AI vary significantly based on the industry/sectors. Financial services, technology, media, and telecommunications sectors are leading the adoption of AI, driven by increased technological readiness, investments, regulatory mandates, the need for cost reduction and enhanced reputational trust.
AI adoption barriers
As organisations accelerate their AI adoption, the path forward is marked by opportunities and complexities. Let’s understand the common challenges that organisations face around Agentic AI.
Organisations often struggle to adopt Agentic AI due to unclear use cases or a lack of business value. Without well-defined applications and use cases, leaders risk investing in AI experiments that do not scale or demonstrate return, thereby slowing buy-in and funding.
Integration with legacy systems is another big problem. For Agentic AI deployment to be successful, organisations need dynamic and connected environments, which is often a challenge for companies that rely on rigid legacy infrastructure that does not support autonomous AI agents to plug in, adapt and orchestrate processes.
Additionally, there are governance, risk and compliance concerns. Delegating decision-making to AI is a concern for organisations, especially when there is a lack of regulatory frameworks around Agentic AI.
Another challenge is a lack of technical expertise. AI deployment requires deep technical capabilities in adaptive learning, realistic simulation, agent orchestration and enterprise integration. Without these skills in-house, organisations have no option but to rely on a third party for support, which often slows down the adoption process.
Other AI adoption challenges include high investment and operational costs, safety and security concerns, and the need for workforce readiness.
Evaluating solutions for Agentic AI adoption
AI can really change the way organisations operate . If implemented correctly, it can significantly boost efficiency, productivity, and spark innovation across industries. To truly harness its transformative potential, leaders must focus on adopting AI and addressing concerns such as implementation challenges, investment needs, risk management and talent gaps.
Organisations can accelerate their AI adoption by promoting continuous learning, implementing robust risk mitigation strategies and improving their governance frameworks. It also needs some platform modernisation and process re-engineering. Besides upgrading tech stacks, organisations must focus on managing data properly and customising solutions to fit the local regulatory and business contexts.
Adopting Agentic AI requires technological advancements and a change in how organisations think. It is essential to have leadership support, a shared vision and stakeholder engagement. Instead of focusing solely on KPIs and efficiency, leadership should encourage experimentation and learning from failures. Organisations must prioritise internal training and workshops to develop AI literacy and gather input for new use cases from all employees across the organisation.
To successfully implement AI, it is essential to understand and incorporate the perspectives of various stakeholders, including the CHRO, CFO, and the technical team. A balanced approach that addresses integration, governance, compliance and workforce readiness can contribute to the overall organisational success.
Author is Chandrashekar Mantha, Partner, Media & Entertainment Sector Leader, Deloitte India.
Moneycontrol journalists are not involved in creation of this article.
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