A pair of new reports released this week offered an unvarnished, real look at India’s rapidly shifting AI landscape. From hiring to enterprise, the Biz Staffing Comrade’s HR Leaders’ Roundtable on “The Human Enterprise in an AI World” survey and the EY-CII AIdea Outlook 2026 report “Is India ready for Agentic AI?” had the same questions, just directed at different audiences.
The HR Conclave led to a Biz Staffing Comrade survey, which revealed an undeniable truth about AI in hiring: the biggest worry in AI adoption isn’t “robots taking jobs”, but simply the lack of trust in algorithmic decisions. Nearly 6 in 10 HR leaders said they worry employees and managers don’t trust AI-driven recommendations. Only 27 per cent (less than 3 in 10) blamed poor change management and murky communication. This meant that AI adoption is proving harder than plugging in new tech.
Indian companies are known for complex, legacy processes and diverse approaches, but they have also slowed down their AI journeys.
The EY-CII report, AIdea Outlook 2026, provided us with the enterprise-scale version of AI adoption.
Indian companies are past the pilot stage for generative AI, with nearly half running multiple projects in live environments and 10 per cent scaling up, noted the report. But full-scale transformation still remains tricky, with governance, integration headaches, and legacy tech becoming proverbial speed bumps.
Cloud-first and hybrid models dominate the Indian IT market. Home-grown Small Language Models (SLMs), with tools fit for India’s languages, vernacular context, and devices, have increasingly become startup hits. And AI taking over jobs is the least of the concerns.
Yes, AI is replacing outsourced, repetitive tasks, but frontline staff and domain experts aren’t facing wholesale automation, the report further noted.
Instead, boardrooms are now focused on upskilling, not layoffs, with almost 4 in 10 HR leaders naming internal capability-building as the top talent goal.
Companies like Axis Bank, State Bank of India, Tata Steel, Reliance Jio, and Bharti Airtel aren’t just talking up AI. They have started running at scale, reporting productivity leaps and new business models from GenAI and Agentic AI, the report noted.
But the elephant in the room remains, one that is about building trust. And trust is a virtue of patience in Indian corporates. “Winning with AI is about trust as much as technology,” stated the EY-CII report.
