Several Indian companies are investing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the long term, with also a growing interest in using open-source tools, according to a study called ‘ROI of AI’ conducted by Morning Consult for IBM in collaboration with Lopez Research.

It revealed that 87% of Indian respondents made significant progress in executing their 2024 AI strategy, with 76% already seeing a positive return on investment (ROI) from their AI investments.

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19% of the respondents said they broke even on their AI investments with just 4% claiming they recorded a negative ROI.

Apart from that, Indian companies are also experimenting with AI to find new use cases, with 89% of the surveyed ones saying that their companies have started more than 10 pilots in 2024.

Going forward, 93% of them indicated they will increase their AI investments in 2025, while 71% are planning to use open-source ecosystems.

“The growing use of open-source AI tools is crucial for improving productivity and financial returns,” said Sandip Patel, Managing Director, IBM India & South Asia. “However, it’s clear that this technology needs to be leveraged responsibly if we are to scale its use.”

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Another fact is that 83% of the AI use is for IT operations, 56% for software coding, and 55% for data quality management.

Challenges faced by Indian companies when it comes to AI

Indian companies also face a range of challenges related to AI. These include a lack of AI governance (53%), lack of AI expertise (51%), technology integration (51%), data management (41%) and failure to deliver business value (39%).

The metrics for measuring success are also different. “As organizations begin to implement AI at scale, many are placing greater stock in success metrics such as productivity gains, in part because traditional hard-dollar ROI has yet to show up on the balance sheets,” said Maribel Lopez of Lopez Research.

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Faster software development (34%), rapid innovation (32%), and productivity time savings (17%) ranked as the three most important metrics used.