What is your reaction to the Union Budget 2026?
It is a very good Budget. From a data-centre and Cloud-computing perspective, opportunities in India are rising. If you look at IDC’s report on the Indian market, Cloud service is witnessing strong growth. The market is expected to reach $30.4 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 22.6 per cent. That is encouraging. That said, we expect more detail and clarification, especially for data centres. Once they are available, we will be in a better position to comment.
Oracle India has been growing double-digit in India, What is driving the growth story?
India is one of the fastest-growing major economies globally, and we are seeing progress across industries — banking, manufacturing, health care, and the public sector.
Growth in India is being driven significantly by public Cloud service. In 2024, this market was about $10.9 billion and is projected to reach $30.4 billion by 2029, as mentioned earlier. The CAGR, of 22.6 per cent, reflects strong momentum.
If we look at the Indian market for artificial intelligence (AI), it is poised to reach $17 billion by 2027, making it one of the fastest-growing AI markets globally. India has about 600,000 AI professionals and around 700 million internet users, contributing roughly 16 per cent of global AI talent — second only to the United States (US). This reflects India’s demographic advantage and strong education base in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
AI adoption across sectors is expected to add another $17 billion-26 billion, which is a staggering number. Across Oracle’s lines of business — infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, and software as a service — we are seeing strong growth.
What has worked for us includes our multi-cloud strategy, flexibility, continuous innovation, and differentiated offers. This is not the first year of double-digit growth; it has been consistent for several years.
Year 2025 ended on the question of whether AI was a bubble. There are reports that say AI is yet to show results on value … Is this true for India as well?
The Indian landscape on information technology has moved beyond the excitement phase into an incremental phase, where organisations are reimagining how technology drives business value. In the past one year I have not met a single organisation that is not experimenting with AI.
In terms of tangible benefits, we are seeing large-scale, mission-critical projects. For example, under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks has modernised its trademark-application platform, using our Cloud infrastructure and autonomous database.
In banking, one of the oldest private banks in India has unified core operations and leveraged AI through Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications to automate processes, reduce costs, improve productivity, and enhance customer satisfaction.
So yes, everyone is experimenting with AI, but India is seeing scale. Chief information officers today are no longer satisfied with pilots and proofs of concept — they are demanding measurable outcomes, tangible return on investment, and enterprise-scale transformation. India is fast moving in that direction. We are ahead of many large economies globally.
How much of that innovation is coming from India development centres?
India is an important part of Oracle. We have more than 50,000 employees here, and all lines of business are represented here. Our India teams work closely with our headquarters in the US, so everything we are building globally has a significant contribution from India.
Agentic AI is the latest buzzword. Some believe it will scale faster than GenAI in enterprises. What is your view?
Agentic AI is certainly the next frontier. While GenAI generates content, agentic AI executes tasks. We are seeing a clear shift from AI copilots to AI agents, which represents a fundamental change in how work gets done. These agents don’t just recommend action — they execute end-to-end processes with minimal human intervention. India is surprisingly mature in this area too, often skipping legacy cycles and moving directly to advanced AI-driven operations.
 "Shailender Kumar, senior vice-president and regional managing director, Oracle India and NetSuite JAPAC")