This includes homegrown enterprises as well, which are investing in agentic AI, driving demand for such solutions for large global technology majors, executives told ET.
Companies such as IBM and Automation Anywhere are also doubling up on the India market by setting up innovation centres and hiring more people respectively as they see demand increase in the region.
Globally this is a $11-18 trillion market opportunity, according to a McKinsey report. A report from Grand View Research estimates the Indian market to be $1.73 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 54%.
Companies are tapping into this. Last week, OpenAI launched ChatGPTAgent, which can handle users’ tasks autonomously using virtual computers. Over the past few months, companies such as IBM, Salesforce, Snowflake and Google have launched agentic AI suites to help customers automate their workflows.
While there is demand, the space is not without challenges. Experts told ET that adoption is low as most companies are still experimenting with GenAI and implementation will take another couple of years.
Why is agentic AI taking off now?
There are a couple of reasons.
Giridhar LV, co-founder of Nuvepro, which works with enterprises for skilling employees in GenAI, and a former Mindtree executive, said unlike 3-4 months back, agentic AI applications show a clear path for return on investment.
For instance, agentic workflows can automate repeated tasks freeing up the time for more productive work across departments and industries. “You can now completely automate a workflow with or without humans in the loop. This was not as clear 3-4 months back,” he said.
“We see organisations experiment with agentic workflow over the next few months to see where agentic workflow makes sense and where it does not,” he said.
While coding agents are widely adopted to increase productivity, other areas that are seeing increased adoption include customer service and document processing.
Dinesh Nirmal, senior vice president at IBM Software, told ET recently that enterprises want to optimise time-consuming processes. “For instance, document processing is taking off because enterprises want to disrupt that line of business. (If) You have a payment process for a vendor, (and) payment takes a month to pay, can the same thing be done in a day,” Nirmal said.
As a result, many enterprises are now willing to invest in the technology.
India taking off
Ankur Kothari, co-founder of Automation Anywhere, recently told ET that unlike 5-6 years ago, where the multinational companies formed a large portion of their clientele, they are seeing increasing demand from the Indian enterprises.
IBM’s Nirmal shared that they work with large financial institutions and are seeing more enterprises adopting their technology. “The Indian market is opening up and we are seeing a lot of momentum,” he said. The company is seeing new technologies creating opportunities for its existing customers and new customers, he said.
But this is not without challenges.
Challenges
While there is hype, there are also concerns making the adoption slow.
The latest McKinsey report highlighted that over 80% of the companies have not seen any material impact on their top or bottom line from their GenAI initiatives.
A Bengaluru-based tech investor shared that the biggest challenge is also with enterprises, who are experimenting with these technologies but there are fewer deployments, as there are potential concerns over hallucination and security, which are inherent to AI systems.
Nirmal explained that any new technology will take time for adoption, and in the case of GenAI, there are multiple challenges in terms of reliability, scalability, security and regulatory concerns.
According to him, it will take another 18-24 months to see real benefits of agentic AI as enterprises implement these solutions.
