India Inc may not be at the forefront of cutting-edge technological development, but it is gearing up for large-scale adoption of artificial intelligence, with large enterprises beginning to rework organisational structures, workflows and leadership roles to embed AI across operations.
That shift has been most clearly articulated by Reliance Industries, where chairman Mukesh Ambani recently talked about framing AI as a new operating model rather than a bolt-on technology.
Reliance’s draft AI manifesto positions AI as a horizontal capability cutting across businesses, with a focus on redesigning end-to-end workflows rather than delivering isolated use cases. The approach reflects a broader point made by Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella during his India visit last month. “The countries, companies and communities that pulled ahead weren’t the ones that invented the leading tech, but the ones that adopted it the fastest,” Nadella said, pointing to India’s advantage in scaling technologies once they are proven.
Beyond the Hype
Across corporate India, companies are structuring AI differently depending on their scale and organisational culture. Large conglomerates with multiple businesses are increasingly moving towards centralised AI teams or dedicated subsidiaries to drive standardisation, governance and platform development. Smaller firms, and several large single-business companies, are embedding AI within existing IT or digital transformation functions.
At Tata Sons, Chairman N Chandrasekaran in his New Year message to employees, reiterated the group’s focus on adopting AI across functions to improve execution, signalling that AI is now viewed as an enterprise-wide lever rather than an experimental tool.
Industry experts say there is no one-size-fits-all organisational model. While 2025 saw companies such as Reliance and TCS announce AI-focused subsidiaries, smaller firms may not see the need to create separate entities. “Whether you make it a subsidiary or keep it within group IT is a financial engineering decision,” Hari Balaji, principal partner, technology consulting at EY, told FE. “How much you empower that central AI team depends entirely on how decisions are traditionally made in the organisation.”
Reliance’s emphasis on redesigning workflows, from procure-to-pay to plant-to-port, also underlines why 2026 is unlikely to deliver immediate, clean profit-and-loss attribution from AI. Productivity gains are emerging across functions, but they are incremental and difficult to isolate in financial reporting. “I don’t think we should expect a big bang quarter where everyone suddenly says we have unlocked so much value from AI,” Balaji said. “It will be a gradual rewriting of how people do things.”
New Organisational Diamond
At the execution level, the challenge remains moving beyond proof-of-concept. “Around 80% of clients have already done POCs,” said Shweta Srivastava, practice head for data analytics and AI at Inspira Enterprise. “The real challenge is data readiness, integration into existing workflows, and organisational change management.”
These realities are reshaping leadership roles inside companies. AI heads are increasingly acting as internal orchestrators, responsible for governance, talent skilling, vendor strategy and adoption across functions. “This cannot remain optional or innovation-led anymore,” Srivastava said. “It is becoming mainstream.”