2025 will be the Year of AI ROI for Indian IT and Enterprise
As we enter 2025, we see companies anxious about AI’s return on investment (ROI). Throughout 2023 and 2024, the biggest focus for Indian IT and enterprises was moving from ideas to proof of concept (POC) to products. However, according to recent reports, Indian companies are not shying away from investing more in AI. This is also in line with Accenture’s Q1 FY25 earnings call. The company reported record generative AI bookings of $1.2 billion, bringing the total to $4.2 billion since September 2023. This marks the highest quarterly bookings in the segment, reflecting growing client investments in generative AI. This is also a positive hint for generative AI growth for Indian IT for the coming year. According to a new Freshworks report on AI in the workplace, 90% of Indian companies believe AI solutions are essential for achieving business success by 2025. India is setting global benchmarks in AI integration and innovation. Notably, 79% of organisations plan to augment their AI budgets, with spending expected to increase by an average of 41% from 2024. India’s position as the world leader in AI investment is fueled by its strong confidence in ROI. Shelton Rego, vice president of Freshworks India, said, “The combination of mandatory AI integration and workforce upskilling initiatives is driving India’s productivity and innovation to new heights.” The Freshworks report includes perspectives from around 4,000 professionals, including C-suite executives from HR, IT, customer service and support, and legal departments. Indians Use More AI than the Others Interestingly, the report also highlights the optimistic approach of the Indian workforce when it comes to using AI solutions. While only 26% of workers worldwide use AI daily, the figure is nearly double in India, with 45% reporting daily usage. A staggering 74% of Indian professionals consider themselves knowledgeable or experts in AI, which is significantly higher than the global average of 55%. This confidence translates to comfort and trust, as 91% of employees in India feel at ease using AI tools (compared to 67% globally), and 90% trust AI to enhance work processes (versus 66% globally). India also leads in implementing mandatory AI-use policies, with 65% of employees required to incorporate AI into all or part of their work— the highest globally. This trend is particularly evident in IT and marketing, where employees highlight AI’s speed, effectiveness, and necessity for achieving results. Weekly AI usage among Indian workers is unparalleled, with 88% utilising AI-powered software, outpacing regions like the US, UK, and Europe. As a result, 85% of organisational leaders in India report improved ROI from AI investments, with IT and marketing departments seeing the greatest benefits. This was also confirmed by the recent IBM report on APAC AI Outlook 2025. It reveals that Indian enterprises are now almost done with experimentation and are looking for returns on their AI investments. According to the report, many Indian respondents anticipate long-term benefits from AI in areas such as innovation (26%), revenue generation (21%), cost savings (12%), and improved employee productivity (12%). “In 2025, AI is set to be the game-changer for Indian enterprises, revolutionising productivity and enabling unprecedented scalability,” said Sandip Patel, MD, IBM India & South Asia. He added that the focus this year would be on leveraging AI responsibly to drive real business value, “moving beyond low-risk experiments to strategic initiatives that provide a competitive edge and improved ROI”. Krishna Vij, VP – IT staffing at TeamLease Digital, told AIM that achieving ROI by 2025 depends on several key strategies. “The primary consideration should be focusing AI applications on high-impact areas like customer experience, strategy optimisation, and operational efficiency to realise quicker, measurable results,” she said. Vij added that the second area of investment should be in employee training and upskilling, which is crucial to maximise the potential of AI tools and ensure smooth integration into existing workflows. “The third area of interest should be to embed AI into core business functions such as IT, marketing, and finance which can help drive innovation and productivity,” Vij added. This is how businesses expect AI to contribute 10-20% to revenue growth by 2025. Adoption has Begun, Finally Interestingly, as the conversation around generative AI shifts towards agentic AI and small models that require less investment, Indian enterprises are showing a readiness to achieve ROI. However, with Indian IT companies embedding generative AI into everything, measuring the exact ROI driven by AI remains a challenge. “I predict that every single dollar of revenue will have a generative AI component embedded in it,” Nachiket Deshpande, COO at LTIMindtree, told AIM. Considering that the impact of AI is much bigger than any revenue component any of the service companies will give, Deshpande added, “Counting AI revenue is not a measure that we would like to go after because I think it misrepresents the impact of AI.” Measuring the ROI of GenAI investments is not as straightforward as calculating the savings from a new software tool. It involves a blend of quantitative and qualitative factors, from time saved to human value unlocked. Vijay Raaghavan, the head of enterprise innovation at Fractal, told AIM that unlocking human potential and counting the hours saved would be the ideal way to measure ROI. The initial focus on short-term gains in generative AI projects is evolving into a deeper understanding of AI’s broader potential. Organisations are moving from low-risk, non-core applications to integrating generative AI into core business functions to gain a competitive edge and enhance ROI. Similarly, Mrinal Rai, assistant director and principal analyst at ISG, told AIM that most generative AI use cases are not yet fully in production and are mostly at the PoC stage. “2025 will see a shift from smaller use cases into larger transformation programs,” he said. “The most important ‘return’ identified by clients with AI is the percentage of improvement in efficiency that reduces person-hours/ time taken or improves internal processes.” Nearly 60% of organisations in the Asia-Pacific region expect to see returns on their AI investments within two to five years, while only 11% anticipate benefits within the next two years. Along similar lines, Viswanathan K S, former NASSCOM VP (industry initiatives), told AIM that what we are currently witnessing is merely a lull before the storm when it comes to Indian IT building AI products as it requires a large amount of data to build something tangible. “Let’s not get obsessed with services as of now, but build productionisation of services, as the data is only going to grow several times five years from now,” he said. “We are just waiting for the adoption to take place. The next big thing in AI for the global market would come from Indian IT as we wait for the productionisation of the existing services,” added Viswanathan, and said that Indian IT should currently focus on collecting data necessary for the models.
While only 26% of workers worldwide use AI daily, the figure is nearly double in India, with 45% reporting daily usage.
According to recent reports, Indian companies are not shying away from investing more in AI because ROI is just around the corner.
["AI Impacts", "Indian IT", "ROI on AI"]
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["AI", "ML", "generative AI", "GenAI", "agentic AI", "Aim", "RAG", "R", "Go", "Rust"]
Mohit writes about AI in simple, explainable, and often funny words. He's especially passionate about chatting with those building AI for Bharat, with the occasional detour into AGI.