Long RoI (return on investment) cycle in AI remains a key barrier in faster adoption of the technology by Indian enterprises, said a Lenovo study released on Friday.
Despite the increasing spends, AI adoption in India remains in its early stage with 49% of organizations either evaluating or planning to implement AI in the next 12 months, says the study
Long RoI (return on investment) cycle in AI remains a key barrier in faster adoption of the technology by Indian enterprises, said a Lenovo study released on Friday.
Despite the increasing spends, AI adoption in India remains in its early stage with 49% of organizations either evaluating or planning to implement AI in the next 12 months, according to the study titled Lenovo’s CIO Playbook 2025 - It’s Time for AI-nomics.
This is lower than the Asia Pacific average of 56% but aligns with the global average of 49%. Delivering RoI for AI is a long-term endeavor that requires balancing AI experiments with those that can be scaled, the study noted.
Indian organizations are set to raise their AI spend by 2.7 times, lower than 3.3 times expected across the Asia Pacific region.
“India’s gradual pace reflects a focus on improving regulatory compliance, enhancing customer experience, and accelerating time to market while overcoming business challenges such as data quality issues, unavailability of AI expertise and IT infrastructure costs,” the report adds.
It said the Asia Pacific market expected a 3.6x ROI on average from their AI projects, which requires a measured approach to scaling AI and building internal capabilities.
While in the Indian market, RoI expectations are not so high as it takes two to three years to show results.
“Based on some initial insights, people have seen some good outcomes in their business. They are seeing improvement in productivity, faster time to market and better quality of their production. So these are these are the initial insights and they (companies in India) are already wanting to take this to a different scale now,” Amit Luthra, Managing Director, Lenovo ISG India.
According to the report, while the AI spending in the Asia Pacific market is focused on the back end work, Indian enterprises are spending their AI budgets for customer centric activities.
“Indian enterprises are implementing AI for customer facing activities like sales and marketing for anything and everything that is focused on delivering business outcomes,” said Luthra.
The report said AI-powered PCs were gaining traction in the Asia Pacific market, with 43% of organizations seeing significant productivity gains. While awareness is increasing, local adoption remains slow across markets.
In India, 53% of organizations are already in the planning stage for AI-powered PC adoption. As the technology matures and demonstrates RoI, the adoption curve will accelerate, driving more digital workplace solutions, the study said.