Dell Technologies released India findings from the Modern Enterprise Readiness Study 2026, a survey of 2,950 business and IT decision-makers across 35 countries, including 150 respondents from India and 950 from across Asia Pacific, Japan and Greater China (APJC).
India’s AI journey has reached an inflection point. The question is no longer whether to adopt AI but how to deploy it at scale, with security and with outcomes that justify the investment. In just twelve months, the share of Indian organisations with AI or GenAI solutions in production has grown by a third, and across APJC, nearly three in four organisations now demand proven business outcomes and a clear risk management plan before committing to new initiatives. AI ambition is maturing into AI accountability.
“Indian organisations are moving toward a more integrated approach to enterprise transformation, where AI, infrastructure, workplace modernisation and security need to work together,” said Venkat Sitaram, Senior Director and Country Head, Infrastructure Solutions Group, India, Dell Technologies. “Organisations are looking beyond individual technologies and seeking partners that can help them navigate complexity, strengthen resilience and translate technology investments into measurable business outcomes. As AI adoption scales, the ability to build secure, modern and adaptable foundations will be critical to sustaining that momentum.”
Where Ambition Meets Reality
As AI moves from boardroom priority to business operation, two challenges are emerging as the defining tests of enterprise readiness.
The first is security. The fact that a majority of Indian organisations have seen AI adoption slow or pause because of security and compliance concerns is not simply a technology problem. It reflects a deeper organisational reckoning with what it means to embed AI into systems that handle sensitive data, serve regulated industries and operate under increasing scrutiny. Data governance and regulatory compliance are no longer downstream considerations. They are the conditions under which AI either earns trust or loses it.
The second is infrastructure. The gap between where most Indian organisations are today and where they need to be to run AI at production scale is significant. AI at scale is not just a software challenge. It demands compute, storage and network architectures that most enterprises are still building toward. The organisations that close this gap fastest will have a structural advantage that compounds over time.
The Rise of the Strategic Partner
The important shift revealed by the study is in how Indian organisations are approaching technology partnerships. Nearly 9 in 10 are redirecting spending toward partners with the scale, ecosystem and capabilities to move AI and modernisation from pilots to production. This signals a fundamental change in what enterprises expect from their technology relationships.
The transactional model, built around individual products and point solutions, is losing ground to something more durable. Organisations are seeking partners who can hold accountability for outcomes, not just delivery. Across APJC, the same pattern is emerging, as enterprises recognise that the interdependencies between AI, infrastructure, data and security cannot be managed through a fragmented vendor landscape. The complexity of transformation demands partners who can see across the entire stack and stay committed through execution.
What Comes Next
India’s AI story is one of genuine momentum. The pace of adoption, the growing share of organisations moving from experimentation to production, and the increasing sophistication of how enterprises think about AI readiness all point in the same direction. But the study also offers a clear-eyed view of what separates organisations that will sustain this momentum from those that will not.
The next phase of AI adoption will not be won by those with the most ambitious roadmaps. It will be shaped by organisations that invest in secure, modern and adaptable foundations, that hold business outcomes at the center of every technology decision, and that build the kinds of partnerships that can carry transformation from strategy all the way through to impact.