New Delhi, March 5 Businesses across the Asia Pacific region are accelerating their shift from AI experimentation to implementation, with 99% of Indian organizations planning to increase their AI investments, compared to 96% in the region, according to a study by PC maker Lenovo, released on Thursday.
While businesses in the Asia Pacific are looking to increase their average AI investment by 15%, Indian businesses have the highest budget growth in the region, with an average plan to spend 19% more.
"There is a lot of expectation from India given the AI talent pool available here. A significant amount of AI application development will take place in India. India is talking about a 19% growth in budget. I would say that India is well-positioned in the market in terms of AI adoption," said Lenovo India Vice-President and Managing Director Shailendra Katyal.
He said that a significant amount of AI power is available to consumers through devices, where it will make the biggest difference.
"India is also home to many global technology providers, often referred to as GSIs. Everyone is developing more agents that can use computer power and build on the existing training models that were created a few years ago. This includes training, inference, and the real-world applications," Katyal said.
He noted that the agent for marketing may be different for finance, and potentially different for legal.
"We expect this trend to continue, and, of course, when we look at Indian CIOs, they tend to be more focused on ROI. The demand for faster returns and the expectation for quick payback are also increasing. This is what we are seeing in the sentiment of the CIOs," Katyal said.
He added that CIOs are facing challenges related to legacy infrastructure, and adoption may take more than a year. However, there is also pressure to deliver faster ROI and business outcomes on the investments being made.
According to the report, 90% of organizations in India prefer hybrid AI architectures, combining on-premise and edge environments to balance performance, security, and regulatory requirements.
Lenovo, President for Asia Pacific, ISG, Sumir Bhatia said that 96% of organizations across AP are planning an average increase of 15% in their AI investments, which indicates that AI decisions are now being made at the core of enterprise strategy.
He added that the cost of AI inference can be up to 15 times higher than training. According to the report, 75% of AI compute will be dedicated to inference, with 80% of enterprises relying on distributed edge infrastructure by 2030.
