Gen AI To Drive 43% Of AI Spending In India By 2025, But Adoption Slow: Lenovo Study

Business leaders and IT decision-makers confirm that there is an accelerating shift towards ROI-driven artificial intelligence investments. According to recent Lenovo research, organisations are increasing AI spending by 3.3x in Asia Pacific and 2.7x in India. Despite the increasing spends, AI adoption in India remains in its early stage.

The research was based on a global IDC study of 2,900+ respondents, including over 900 IT and business decision-makers (ITBDMs) from 12 Asia Pacific markets.

AI adoption in India is in its nascent stage, with 49% of organisations either evaluating or planning to implement AI in the next 12 months. This lags behind the Asia-Pacific average (56%) and aligns with the global average (49%) with ROI emerging as the key barrier to quick adoption. 

Asia Pacific organisations expect a 3.6x ROI on average from their AI projects, which requires a measured approach to scaling AI and building internal capabilities.

India's gradual pace reflects a focus on improving regulatory compliance, enhancing customer experience, and accelerating time to market while overcoming business challenges such as data quality issues, unavailability of AI expertise and IT infrastructure costs.

Gen AI is set to transform enterprise workflows, commanding 43% of AI implementation spends in 2025 in India. Sales leads as the top AI use case in India, while IT operations lead across Asia Pacific. There is more focus on marketing (#2) and software development (#3) in India, compared to cybersecurity (#2) and software development (#3) in Asia Pacific.

Ethical issues and biases are the top AI risks this year, yet only 24% globally and 25% in Asia Pacific have fully enforced AI GRC (governance, risk, and compliance) policies. In India, 19% of CIOs report fully implemented enterprise AI GRC policies. 

"Business priorities are shifting in Asia Pacific," said Sumir Bhatia, president, Asia Pacific Infrastructure Solutions Group at Lenovo, "For 2025, governance, risk, and compliance have jumped 12 spots to become the top priority, highlighting the focus on secure and responsible AI. Employee productivity has also climbed from #7 to #2, underscoring its growing importance."

The report shows that 65% of organisations in Asia Pacific are opting for on-premise or hybrid solutions to power AI workloads. Meanwhile, 19% still rely on public cloud services. India reflects a similar trend, with 63% using hybrid or on-prem, while the remainder depend on public cloud.

AI-powered PCs are gaining traction in Asia Pacific, with 43% of organisations seeing significant productivity gains. While awareness is increasing, local adoption remains slow across markets. In India, 53% of organisations are already in the planning stage for AI-powered PC adoption.

With organisations scaling their AI efforts, 34% of Asia Pacific CIOs and 29% of Indian CIOs are leveraging professional AI services to navigate complexities. Interestingly, an additional 54% of CIOs in India are exploring or planning to engage these services in the near future.