Despite Recognizing Benefits, Less Than 40% of Developers Use Generative AI: BCG Report:

India’s information technology-enabled services (ITes) industry is facing a Gen AI adoption problem with only 40 percent adoption, as The Boston Consulting Group’s (BCG) report states more than 80 percent of developers recognize its benefits.

“Global investments in Gen AI are increasing, especially from the U.S, China, the EU and Middle East, and India has the risk of losing its lead in the IT services unless it adopts Gen AI,” the report states.

Over the last several years, India has been at the core of the Global IT services by managing complex programming, software engineering, and managing digital transformations in a routine basis. However, as Gen AI changes how software is built, tested, and deployed, the IT industries have to face the reality of having to change business as usual to practice of traditional techniques cannot solely support any longer.

“I think it's important to get three things right, and one of those things is to move away from the mass training exercises to some tailored proficiency-based learning paths which are very tailored to the different projects that developers are relation. Second, I think they should think about establishing Gen AI centres of excellence and we are seeing more and more of that happening in the industry now. And third, how do they enable skill building through gamification to certifications, career growth pathways, etc,” said Sambhav Jain, MD and partner, BCG.

This issue arises not only from behavior, but from the deep-seated barriers to adoption in the industry as a whole.

This is a conundrum that Jain describes as an Indian IT services. The issue is not as simple as access. Scaling is about behavioral change, process transformation, and leadership. A lot of businesses have started their AI journeys through running POCs or experiments and seeing early wins.

The Indian IT industry is decidedly optimistic regarding the introduction of Agentic AI in 2025

Thus, the report mentions that without a solid base in Gen AI, ITes of India will not be able to implement use cases of Agentic AI. Bypassing Gen AI is not a possibility; firms which do not invest in developing AI capabilities today will find it extremely challenging to compete in the era of self governing AI.