India's Rapid Stride in AI and Multilingual NLP: Empowering Local Application Development Nationwide
In the bustling tech landscape of India, Agentic AI is making a significant impact, transforming the way businesses operate across sectors. This transformation was the focus of discussion at a recent Nasscom event in Bengaluru, where Ali Rey, Group Head Technology of Emirates NBD, spoke about the growing duality of Agentic AI and its potential to empower employees through AI tools.
Emirates NBD, a leading financial institution, is one such example. The bank runs models for GPUs on-premise, aiming to take advantage of AI as much as possible across the bank. As Ali Rey emphasized, this strategy is not just about experimentation, but about leveraging Agentic AI for good use cases and expressing optimism about rolling AI across the bank. The results are impressive, with productivity improvements of 20, 30, or 40% observed at Emirates NBD.
The adoption of Agentic AI is not limited to large enterprises. Over 40% of Indian organizations have adopted Agentic AI, with a projected spending growth from USD 2.1 billion in 2023 to USD 10.4 billion by 2028, signaling strong momentum. India hosts more than 100 Agentic AI startups addressing diverse sectors, with many offering no-code/low-code platforms to enable non-technical users.
The BFSI sector is especially active, using fine-tuned language models for customer care, fraud detection, and personalized services. This illustrates Agentic AI's role in regulated industries with compliance needs. Other sectors like healthcare and retail are also seeing rapid adoption, with Agentic AI being used to accelerate workflows, enhance compliance, and automate complex operations such as customer support and hiring.
Enterprises are leveraging AI agents to bridge the gap between data and action. For instance, logistics firms use AI agents to proactively manage supply chains by detecting disruptions and autonomously rerouting shipments or adjusting production plans based on multistep reasoning.
Indian companies are using Agentic AI agents for various purposes, including customer support automation to reduce manual workload and speed response times, hiring process optimization for faster talent screening and onboarding, process automation in regulated industries to ensure compliance and security while improving efficiency, and supply chain monitoring and decision-making through autonomous disruption management and real-time operational adjustments.
The growing ecosystem, high developer participation, and evolving enterprise use cases indicate that Agentic AI is transitioning from experimentation to becoming a critical operational backbone in Indian businesses across sectors. The software lifecycle is evolving into a "prompt, generate, verify" model with the rise of Agentic AI.
In the second half of FY25, nearly 25% of GenAI startup funding was allocated to Agentic AI. Over 83% of Indian GenAI startups focus on vertical, application-oriented solutions. Enterprises are expected to spend 3-4 times more on AI agents in 2025, redirecting investments from traditional AI toward interactive, autonomous agent-based systems.
Ankit Bose, Head of AI at Nasscom, mentioned that developer satisfaction effectiveness has increased significantly due to AI usage. The rise in AI talent and multilingual NLP capabilities in India is enabling the development of applications in regional languages, opening up opportunities for a wider audience.
However, it's crucial to ensure that Agentic AI is used for good use cases, as Ali Rey stated. With its potential to empower employees and automate workflows, Agentic AI is poised to play a significant role in the future of Indian businesses.
- Emirates NBD, a leading financial institution, is using Agentic AI to improve productivity by up to 40%, demonstrating its potential in businesses across sectors.
- In India, more than 100 Agentic AI startups are addressing diverse sectors, including healthcare and retail, helping to accelerate workflows and automate complex operations.
- The BFSI sector is actively using Agentic AI for customer care, fraud detection, and personalized services, demonstrating its role in regulated industries with compliance needs.
- The rise in AI talent and multilingual NLP capabilities in India is enabling the development of applications in regional languages, opening up opportunities for a wider audience.
- Enterprises are expected to spend 3-4 times more on AI agents in 2025, redirecting investments from traditional AI toward interactive, autonomous agent-based systems like Agentic AI.
