In 2024, even non-tech companies began exploring AI, with generative tools flooding the market. But in 2025, AI moved from plan to reality in Indian organisations. The question shifted from whether companies would adopt AI to how fast and how deeply they could integrate it.

From major conglomerates to IT services giants and startups, AI tools, copilots and autonomous agents entered everyday workflows—drafting emails, analysing data, handling customer interactions, supporting developers, reviewing contracts, and predicting demand.

According to an EY report, 47% of organisations now have multiple AI deployments in operation, 10% are scaling use cases at an enterprise level, and close to 50% say that a good portion of their GenAI proof-of-concepts have moved into production.

2025 marked the shift from curiosity to conviction, industry experts told Inc42. Indian businesses moved beyond trials to serious commitment, seeing tangible gains in customer engagement, faster turnarounds, fewer operational errors, optimised supply chains and shorter innovation cycles.

Industries including banking, retail, healthcare, manufacturing and IT services began to fundamentally rethink how work was done—reimagining decision-making, redesigning internal processes, and rebuilding workflows around AI, industry experts told Inc42.

“AI is no longer an experiment but an execution imperative. In 2025, global and Indian enterprises turned intent into impact by moving from pilots to production and from scattered initiatives to integrated systems that deliver measurable business outcomes. What began as experimentation has matured into enterprise-wide transformation,” Khadim Batti, cofounder and CEO of SaaS giant Whatfix, said.

Despite widespread experimentation through pilot programmes, proof-of-concepts, innovation labs and internal AI task forces, few organisations unlocked true enterprise-level transformation, industry experts said.

AI existed almost everywhere, but wasn’t yet fully embedded in core processes that drive efficiency, scale and long-term competitiveness. Teams were often using AI to accelerate old workflows, not redesign them. 2025 was the year AI moved from hype to habit, but largely remained in the pilot phase.

“Today, AI lives in pockets like marketing, customer experience, supply chain and finance, but rarely connects into the organisation’s core decision architecture. It’s like installing high-performance engines in cars that still run on broken, old roads. The value gets trapped at the use-case level,” Shub Bhowmick, cofounder and CEO of data science startup Tredence, said.

How India Is Making AI Truly Local

A clear shift in India’s AI journey in 2025 has been localisation. After years of relying on broad, globally-trained models, organisations now prioritise systems that understand India—how people speak, how businesses operate, and how data is shaped by local behaviour.

As Ganesh Gopalan, founder and CTO of Gnani.ai, puts it: “In India, AI can’t just be intelligent, it has to be relevant. If it doesn’t reflect local language, infrastructure limitations, and business realities, it simply won’t scale. Local context is what separates experiments from real adoption.”

Global tech giants are following suit. Earlier this month, Google announced an expansion of its AI infrastructure in India. The move will let organisations train and deploy advanced Gemini models entirely within the country, addressing critical data residency and sovereignty requirements.

© Inc42