Bangalore December 24 2017: Indian organizations are displaying an increasing appetite towards the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”), which in turn is expected to spike organization spends on this technology, over the next 18 months, finds an IDC study commissioned by Intel. Nearly 70% organizations in India are expected to deploy AI solutions before 2020,  says the study.
Nearly 75% of the firms surveyed, anticipate benefits in business process efficiency and employee productivity with the use of AI, and 64% of the respondents believe that this technology can empower them in revenue augmentation through better targeting of offers and improved sales processes. While these present some great incentives for AI in India, the other side of the coin shows that 76% of the companies are or believe that they will face a shortage of skilled personnel to harness the power of AI.
Indian enterprises have been quick to adopt AI in the recent past, with nearly 1 in 5 organizations (22.2%) across the four verticals surveyed implementing the technology in some way. This number is anticipated to soar considerably by mid-2019 with nearly 7 in 10 firms (68.6%) anticipated to deploy AI, indicating that the technology will reach mainstream adoption. The Intel India commissioned report highlights the cross industry functions that will benefit from AI over the next 18 months:

• The most prominent function that is currently being impacted by AI in organizations, is information technology. As a part of the drive to boost efficiencies and reduce costs, already half of the larger companies, particularly in Telecommunications, Media, and Technology (TMT), and Banking, Financial Services & Insurance (BFSI), have implemented AI. 71% organizations are looking at increased process automation as a key benefit and almost equal number of firms (69%) are looking at increased employee productivity across several business functions.
• Retail, and to some extent BFSI organizations, are leveraging AI to increase efficiency in their sales & marketing function, which has emerged as the second most popular use case. Businesses, particularly in retail (including e-commerce), and telecommunications are exploring mechanisms to boost their revenue by using AI for better targeting of offers and improved sales processes. Transforming customer experience to improve their loyalty ranks high on the list of benefits for retail and banking organizations. Banks have led the innovation journey as far as transformation of customer experience is concerned.
• Manufacturing and retail organizations have also attempted to redraw and refine their supply chain networks using AI.
• Finally, financial services organizations (63.9%) are more focused on improving regulatory compliance and fraud reductionfrom AI implementation, while retail and automotive organizations are looking at improving consistency in the way decisions are made

Prakash Mallya, Managing Director, Sales & Marketing Group, Intel India said, “We all talk about the opportunity that India presents for AI, but often the types of industries that will embrace AI, the challenges that AI can address, and the roadblocks in implementation, are vague. This research is a small step towards comprehending this knowledge, and enabling companies such as ours, shape strategy and move ahead in the right direction.”
However, concerns around adoption of AI continue with high cost of solutions, acute shortage of skilled professionals, unclear return on investment, and cybersecurity emerging as the key hindrances.  Regulatory compliance and lack of quality data are seen as other important challenges.