AI on its own: How tech is reshaping work as GenAI adoption grows in India

Agentic AI, software systems capable of performing complex tasks with minimal human oversight, will likely be the biggest tech trend in 2025

What will be the big technology trend in 2025? It will likely be agentic artificial intelligence (AI), according to top executives and analysts. Agentic AI, short for autonomous generative AI agents, refers to a software system or programme that does complex tasks with minimal or no human oversight. Much more than chatbots and co-pilots, agentic AI has the potential to improve the productivity of knowledge workers by automating complex, multi-step processes in various business functions. 

As many 25 per cent of companies that use generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) will this year launch agentic AI pilots, or proofs of concept, according to consulting firm Deloitte. Such launches will grow to 50 per cent in 2027. Agentic AI in some industries could become part of workflows by late 2025. 

Startups and larger technology companies that recognise agentic AI's potential to drive revenue growth are helping in its adoption. Investors have given more than $2 billion to agentic AI startups in the past two years, focusing on companies catering to the enterprise sector. 

A growing number of technology companies, Cloud providers and other players are developing their own agentic AI solutions. They are making strategic acquisitions and licensing agentic AI technology from startups and recruiting their employees, according to Deloitte. 

‘Truly intelligent AI’ 

“We're entering a phase where AI is evolving from being assistive to becoming truly intelligent, with autonomous agents capable of making decisions and orchestrating entire ecosystems,” said Sindhu Gangadharan, managing director of SAP Labs India and chairperson of Nasscom. 

“GenAI is entering a transformative phase of agentification, evolving from task-specific tools to specialised, interconnected AI agents. These systems are transitioning to higher levels of autonomy, capable of logical reasoning and decision-making,” she said. 

SAP Joule, a GenAI assistant, helps organisations in adopting interconnected AI agents that work together in supply chain optimisation, predictive maintenance, and customer service. “These AI agents are built with the ability to reason, plan, and execute; not just individually but collectively across multiple applications,” said Gangadharan. “Imagine asking Joule to help settle a payment dispute. Joule doesn’t just automate isolated steps; it brings together agents to deliver connected, cross-functional outcomes.” 

Accenture’s ‘Technology Vision 2025’ report predicts autonomous AI will increasingly act as technology development partners and personal brand ambassadors to foster a symbiotic relationship with humans. 

“Advancements in digitising knowledge, new AI models, agentic AI systems and architecture enables enterprises to create their own unique cognitive digital brains,” said Karthik Narain, group chief executive - technology and chief technology officer, Accenture. 

Satinder Pal Singh, head of solution architecture at Amazon Web Services (AWS) for India and South Asia, said GenAI was the leading technology last year and its adoption will expand in 2025. 

“We will continue to see more organisations leveraging our AWS services to drive innovation in 2025. This will be coupled with the rise of agentic AI capabilities which are set to redefine the way businesses function. Companies will use AI agents to automate complex tasks that stretch across multiple teams and applications,” said Singh. 

Using agentic AI, a coder can enter ideas to develop software through a prompt. The agentic AI will convert the ideas into executable code – a process that automates multiple steps in software development, according to Deloitte. For example, US-based Cognition Labs in March 2024 launched Devin, an autonomous ‘software engineer’, capable of reasoning, planning, and completing complex engineering tasks that otherwise require thousands of decisions. Devin does programming unassisted, based on natural language prompts from human programmers.  

Working with humans 

“We’re going to see growth in multi-agent systems, where multiple AI agents work together autonomously to achieve complex goals, further minimising human intervention,” said Oliver Parker, vice-president of Generative AI Go-to-market at Google Cloud. 

Indian companies are applying GenAI in workflows as the technology’s cost reduces. For instance, the API costs for OpenAI’s GPT, a popular chatbot, have dropped 80 per cent in two years, according to a EY report called ‘How much productivity can GenAI unlock in India?’. 

GenAI’s best productivity gains are expected in the services sector which has a higher labour share in gross output, while manufacturing and construction will see smaller impacts, according to EY. A prominent use of the technology will be in Indian language AI chat and voice digital interfaces and assistants. 

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chairman and chief executive officer, recently said that AI agents will collaborate with humans to coordinate tasks across systems. 

“When we think about agents, you stitch the multimodal capability, planning and reasoning, and memory and tools use in particular, plus entitlements, you can start building personal agents, team agents, enterprise-wide and cross-enterprise agents.  That ‘agentic world’ is what we are looking forward to sort of all building,” said Nadella at a Microsoft event in Bengaluru.