Must shift AI from adoption to transformation: Deloitte says Indian firms lag behind global peers in expertise

Deloitte’s latest ‘State of Enterprise AI’ survey for 2026 captured insights that show today’s business leaders “face an unprecedented challenge: moving beyond pilots to truly integrating AI into the heart of their organizations.”

The report said companies must implement “intentional change” that includes redesigning core processes and operating models with AI and “ensure that human powers such as judgment, creativity, empathy, and relationship building are elevated rather than automated.”

For India in particular, the research noted that the majority of organizations expect their AI budgets and the productivity they derive from the technology to increase in the coming year. However, when it comes to expertise, Indian companies lag behind global companies.

The report was based on a survey of 3,235 executive-to-clerical respondents from six industries (consumer; energy, resources and industries; financial services; life sciences and healthcare; technology, media and telecom; government and utilities) and 24 countries, conducted between August and September 2025. It also includes additional insights from 15 interviews with global C-suite executives and AI and data science leaders at large organizations across industries. Responses from 200+ business and technology leaders for India

What is the situation of Indian companies?

The ‘State of AI in Enterprise’ report for 2026 found that Indian companies are outpacing their global counterparts in adopting AI, but there is a significant talent gap with lower levels of specialist expertise, PTI reported.

“40 per cent of Indian respondents report significant or full usage compared to the global average of around 28 per cent, indicating that Indian organizations are not just piloting AI but are increasingly operationalizing it to unlock short-term productivity and business outcomes,” he added.

• 94% of Indian organizations expect their AI budgets to increase next year.
• However, 0-4 per cent of Indian companies have high levels of AI expertise, lagging behind the global average of 2-8 per cent.
• The report lists regulatory and compliance demands as the top barriers to AI integration (39%), followed by resistance to change (34%).
• Organizations report relatively lower pressure from cost (12%) and infrastructure (5%) constraints; This suggests that governance preparation and operating model change are more immediate limiting factors for scale.
• Almost all respondents (97%) expect productivity to increase.

“The next chapter will be driven less by access to technology than by the ability to build organizational capacity, strengthen governance and align people with new ways of working. Organizations that invest in trust and skills today will be better positioned to turn early gains into sustainable advantage,” Deloitte India Partner S Anjani Kumar told the agency.

Fewer organizations are focusing on transformation: Deloitte

According to a Deloitte report, there is a gap between organizations looking to expand their workforce’s access to AI tools and achieve early productivity gains and those attempting to create “true organizational transformation.”

Deloitte also reported three key AI trends that are “reshaping” the AI ​​field:

• Sovereign AI (technological autonomy for nations and organizations),
• Agency AI (increasing the need for governance by enabling autonomous reasoning and action) and
• Physical artificial intelligence (merging digital and material worlds, making security and human surveillance critical).

The survey also showed that companies increased employee access to AI by 50% in just one year; The percentage of employees now equipped with validated AI tools has increased from 40% to 60%. However, while artificial intelligence increases productivity and efficiency; only a subset uses it to rewrite work.

• 34% of companies are starting to use AI to profoundly transform their business,
• 30% are redesigning core processes around AI and
• The remaining 37% use AI only at a surface level, making little or no change to the underlying business processes.
• Despite high expectations for automation, 84% of companies have not redesigned jobs or the nature of work around AI capabilities.

“While each is seeing productivity and efficiency gains, only the first group is truly redesigning their jobs rather than optimizing what exists,” he said.

Challenges: Delay, human role and concerns in AI surveillance

According to the research, the use of autonomous artificial intelligence agents has increased among companies, but supervision is lagging. “Nearly 3 in 4 companies (74%) plan to deploy agented AI within two years. However, 1 in 5 companies (21%) report having a mature model for the governance of autonomous agents, increasing the possibility of unintended risks.”

He also noted that AI need not eliminate the value of human input in organizations and “may increase the need for uniquely human strengths such as adaptability and judgment in the near term.”

A former vice president of telecommunications explained: “We thought we were going to automate things. The truth is, you’re not. You’re going to give existing employees force multipliers where they can be more effective. Maybe one day these things will start to be headless, they’re just feeding off a dashboard measurement, and when something really bad happens you can pull staff back to wait for an alert that wakes someone up or flashes red on the screen. But initially it’s just going to be more work for these people. They’re not going to calm down. They’re going to monitor these agents, making sure their volume measurements are accurate.” they will be sure, they will make sure the qualitative metrics are accurate, and they will be there to engage them when they hit a human door in the loop and need to interact with a human for accountability purposes.

Overall, surveyed companies had broad concerns: Data privacy and security top the list at 73%, according to the report; This is followed by legal, intellectual property and regulatory compliance (50%), governance capabilities and oversight (46%), and model quality, consistency and explainability (46%).

Harnessing the full potential of AI: 6 focus areas

• Close the gap between access and activation: Many organizations have used AI tools, but few have achieved meaningful use. The gap between availability and adoption is the primary barrier to residual value. According to Deloitte, successful companies focus not only on access but also on activation.
• Unlock the human advantage by redesigning work around AI: He added that the most successful organizations are redesigning jobs to seamlessly combine human power and AI capabilities. “Organizations should take an AI-specific approach and redesign work holistically rather than layering AI into legacy processes,” according to the study.

• Build governance before scaling and make it everyone’s job: Deloitte believes that incorporating oversight into performance rubrics will create shared responsibility to help employees identify challenges and guide the use of safe, reliable AI. To do this: Organizations need to define where people should maintain control; and cross-functional teams should establish governance frameworks early so that scale does not outpace control. He also warned that there needs to be a calibrated balance between risk management and innovation. “The goal is not to add bureaucracy, but to create clear, adaptable guardrails that allow for rapid and responsible progress,” he said.
• Meet dominant AI requirements with focus and discipline: Leading companies are taking a focused approach: assessing which data and workloads should remain within national or regional boundaries, determining where local model hosting is mandatory, and explaining how standards for transparency, auditability, and documentation vary across markets. He added that Sovereign AI readiness is no longer an exclusive compliance task, but an essential element of corporate resilience and global competitiveness.
• Build a “living” technology and data infrastructure for the AI ​​of tomorrow: An enterprise-wide, real-time system that dynamically adapts to business and regulatory changes will elevate AI infrastructure from IT enterprise to strategic capability, according to the report.
• Pursue strategic reinvention, not increased efficiency: He noted that companies are divided according to whether they treat AI as the foundation of strategy or as a cost-saving tool. “The challenge now is activation: closing the gap from tool access to meaningful adoption, moving beyond trials to operationalize AI at scale, embedding AI into core business processes,” he added.

The State of Artificial Intelligence in Enterprises – Highlights

• As employee access to AI expands, AI is moving from pilot and testing phase to enterprise scaling.

• AI transformation introduces efficiency for many and work redesign for a few; because companies are focusing on building AI fluency rather than redesigning work around AI.
• 77% of surveyed companies say AI development location is an important factor when choosing new technologies.
• AI agents scale faster than scarecrows.
• Physical AI is already embedded in operations and its footprint is growing rapidly, with 74%, or nearly 3 in 4 companies, planning to deploy agency AI within two years.
• 36% of surveyed companies expect at least 10% of their business to be fully automated within a year.
• 84% of companies surveyed have not redesigned their business around AI capabilities.
• 77% of companies surveyed now take the country of origin of the AI ​​solution into account in their supplier selection decisions.
• 21% of companies report that they currently have a mature model for managing autonomous agents.