Indian GCCs faster in rolling out Gen AI projects to production while enterprises take conservative approach: EY

After the stage of evaluation and experimentation, Indian firms are slowly rolling out generative AI projects in production. About 20% of these solutions have graduated from the proof of concept stage to deployment, a new study by accounting giant EY has found. The findings also show that global capability centers (GCCs) have a relatively faster adoption rate, with 30-40% of them rolling POCs to the production stage. 

Further, sectors such as healthcare, life sciences, and financial services took the lead when it comes strategic investment in technologies such as AI — other domains like Industrial and Energy Utilities, and Consumer Products Goods (CPGs) are now pushing the pedal. EY’s analysis has also found that three factors — AI performance and its subsequent impact, understanding the cost implications of AI, and considering AI compliance factors — play important roles for investors investing in an AI company. 

“Enterprises need to make the shift from ad hoc experiments to deploying 'fit for purpose' use cases for immediate value creation and long-term programs that provide functional transformation. They will not only have to build their enterprise AI platform but also keep a close eye on cost implications/total cost of ownership and stay agile to adopt a hybrid approach due to lack of India availability of different models,” said Mahesh Makhija, Partner and Technology Consulting Leader, EY India.

In February this year, consulting company Accenture became the first company to report business generated from generative AI projects. In the quarter ending November 2023, the company secured total project pipeline of $450 million, which grew to $1.1 billion by February 2024. Most of the Indian IT companies still mention generative AI projects in the POC stage, with the exception of TCS which announced that it has a $900 million pipeline of AI and generative AI projects during the Q4FY24 result declaration in April.