Parul
AI readiness is more in Indian businesses. Decision Intelligence Maturity Index by PEAK, an AI company reveals that Indian businesses are leading the way when it comes to commercial AI adoption, routinely outperforming counterparts in both the US and UK.
Decision Intelligence (DI) is the application of AI to commercial decision-making. Because it can offer benefits across an organisation and is not limited to one department or operation, it is how most businesses will adopt the technology.
According to the survey, the US was an early leader in AI, with 28 per cent of US businesses adopting the technology over six years ago – compared to 25 per cent in India and 20 per cent in the UK – India is now the more mature market when it comes to leveraging AI.
The average Indian business scores 64 (out of 100) on Peak’s Decision Intelligence maturity scale, while the US charts 52 and the UK just 44. Data governance and internal communication are key differentiators for Indian businesses.
Also Read: Firecracker units in Sivakasi anxious as Diwali business dips amid high prices
The research, conducted in partnership with the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), finds several factors contributing to this, among them data literacy – which is higher in Indian businesses. Junior employees (those from middle management and down) are far more likely to rely on data than counterparts in the US and UK, with 98 per cent of Indian junior staff saying they had performed data analysis at least once in their current roles, compared to 81 per cent in the US and 64 per cent in the UK.
AI readiness in India
The report further throws light on how businesses structure data teams and how critical that choice is to successful AI adoption. Higher maturity Indian businesses take a different path to peers in the US and UK and tend to favour a decentralised approach, with the majority (33 per cent) of Indian businesses embedding data practitioners in commercial teams to support with analysis – by contrast most US (30 per cent) and UK (25 per cent) businesses have a central data team. Indian businesses are also most likely to temporarily substitute a data expert into a team when needed, with 20 per cent of staff in India having experienced this, compared to 13 per cent in US and 14 per cent in UK.
“India has already overtaken the UK to become the fifth largest economy in the world, and there’s clear signs that its growth won’t stop there. The US and UK have lost ground in the global AI race too, with India claiming the top spot at a time when Western countries are facing increasing geopolitical uncertainty,” says Peak co-founder and CEO, Richard Potter.
Also Read: Is recession a threat to economies, coming over the next year?
Atul Sharma, co-founder and chief technology officer, Peak said, “Organisations in India reached maturity behind many of their Western counterparts; this meant we started from a more advanced technology baseline, and haven’t faced the same implementation delays caused by legacy tech that we’ve seen in the UK and US. But maturity goes well beyond the capabilities of the modern tech stack, and it’s their people that really set Indian businesses up for success with AI.”
Peak’s DI Maturity Index looks at a range of factors – both technical and not – that correlate with AI readiness. There’s evidence that Indian businesses are better at communicating their AI plans, only 2 per cent of Indian workers weren’t sure if their business used AI, compared to 21 per cent in the UK and 18 per cent in the US.
Also watch: A cybersecurity guide for digital MSMEs
The result of this and the higher data literacy seen among Indian workers is a fuller understanding of what can be achieved with AI, which translates into broader support for the technology among end users. When asked if they expected AI to have a positive or negative impact on worker wellbeing in their sector over the next five years, 78 per cent of junior staff in India cited positive. By contrast, only 47 per cent of those in the US thought AI would have a positive impact on worker wellbeing in their industry, and just 26 per cent of those in the UK said the same.
