Only 26% of firms surveyed in India prepared to deploy, leverage AI: Study

Just 26 per cent of organisations surveyed in India are fully prepared to deploy and leverage artificial intelligence-powered technologies, according to the latest report by Cisco.

According to Cisco's inaugural AI Readiness Index released on Thursday, Indian firms are taking proactive measures to prepare for an AI-centric future.

The report surveyed over 8,000 global companies.

The index was developed in response to the accelerating adoption of AI, a generational shift that is impacting business and daily life.

Only 26 per cent of organisations in India are fully prepared to deploy and leverage AI-powered technologies, said a release citing the findings.

While AI adoption has been slowly progressing for decades, the advancements in generative AI, coupled with public availability in the past year, are driving greater attention to the challenges, changes and new possibilities posed by the technology.

"While 93 per cent of respondents believe AI will have a significant impact on their business operations, it also raises new issues around data privacy and security," it revealed.

On the positive side, companies in India are taking many proactive measures to prepare for an AI-centric future.

"When it came to building AI strategies, 95 per cent of organisations already have a robust AI strategy in place or in the process of developing one," it said.

Liz Centoni, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Applications and Chief Strategy Officer at Cisco, observed that as companies rush to deploy AI solutions, they must assess where investments are needed to ensure their infrastructure can best support the demands of AI workloads.

"Organisations also need to be able to observe with context how AI is being used to ensure ROI (return on investment), security and especially responsibility," Centoni said.

About 75 per cent of respondents in India believe they have a maximum of one year to implement an AI strategy before their organisation begins to incur significant negative business impact.

"95 per cent of businesses globally are aware that AI will increase infrastructure workloads, but in India only 39 per cent of organisations consider their infrastructure highly scalable," the study said.

About 39 per cent of companies said they have limited or no scalability at all when it comes to meeting new AI challenges within their current IT infrastructure.