'Indian CEOs must stop asking; start building with AI'

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Key points

• ET World Leaders Forum 2026: Smriti Irani on politics, power and the cost of being a woman Anthropic is already working with Indian enterprises and institutions throughout sectors.
• Indian CEOs should stop 'just asking questions' and start building with AI: Anthropic India MD.
• AI adoption in IndiaAnthropic IndiaAI investing companiesbusiness value from AIGIFT City and AIAI in consultingAI chatbots in enterpriseskotak bankaxis bankinfosys.
• Power shift, a déjà vu: Air India could be new CEO's toughest flight yet.
• Indian CEOs must build real AI products and solutions, moving beyond simple chatbot experiments.

Indian CEOs should stop 'just asking questions' and start building with AI: Anthropic India MD. ET OnlineLast Updated: Aug 21, 2026, 12: 33: 00 PM IST.

Indian CEOs must build real AI products and solutions, moving beyond simple chatbot experiments. Firms are accelerating AI adoption and need to identify complex difficulties for dedicated task forces. Anthropic India is collaborating with major banks and institutions on various AI initiatives. McKinsey estimates AI's economic value at $4.4 trillion, with India investing billions.

As enterprises accelerate AI adoption, indian CEOs need to move beyond experimenting with AI chatbots and start building real products and solutions with the technology, Anthropic India MD Irina Ghose remarked. "Use it for yourself to build things, not just ask questions, " Ghose remarked during a panel discussion at The Economic Times World Leaders Forum in New Delhi, urging CEOs to identify their most complex business challenge and create a dedicated task force to solve it using AI. "If you put across the biggest out there, the rest will surely happen, " she remarked.

ET World Leaders Forum 2026: Smriti Irani on politics, power and the cost of being a woman Anthropic is already working with Indian enterprises and institutions throughout sectors. Ghose remarked the business is working with Axis Bank and Kotak Bank on engineering productivity, NPCI on agentic AI solutions, and systems integrators including TCS and Infosys. Live Events.

It is additionally working with governments and NGOs on agriculture, education, skilling, healthcare and life sciences. While it is working with Digital Green on AI-powered responses to farmers in multiple languages, its AI for Science team is working with IISc on antivenom discovery. "Our mission here remains that it's not with a playbook that we've come in; it's to co-create the playbook which will work for India and then we take it globally, " Ghose remarked. AI opportunity could be worth $4.4 trillion Ghose cited McKinsey research estimating the economic value of AI at $4.4 trillion. Indian firms at present invest around $2.6-2.8 billion in AI, according to research cited during the discussion, with firms surveyed by McKinsey planning to significantly rise investment over the next two years. McKinsey partner Cheryl Lim remarked, even so, that investing in AI does not automatically translate into business value. While 80-90% of firms say they are investing in AI, a similar proportion say they have yet to see significant value from those investments, she stated. "The bigger part is how do we help our talent prepare for it, and what's the change management in place, " Lim remarked. Firms that succeed will be those that redesign workflows, upskill and reskill employees and address anxiety around AI replacing jobs, she went on. India's local needs meet global AI ambitions SAP President-Asia Pacific Verena Siow remarked SAP's three-decade presence in India has assisted it understand local requirements while developing technology for global markets. Its Bengaluru labs are the company's largest outside Germany, with around 40% of the innovation it deploys globally developed from India, she remarked. Ghose remarked local data residency and inference capabilities could further unlock AI adoption in regulated sectors such as banking, insurance and healthcare. GIFT City's edge is India access Hans Christian Dall Nygård, Head of Private Equity at SPEC Finance, remarked GIFT City should not try to replicate Singapore or Dubai. It have decades of financial-market development behind them. "GIFT City is not a copy-paste" exercise, he remarked. Its biggest advantage is access to India, one of the world's fastest-growing major markets. Nygård remarked GIFT City could additionally eventually serve as a platform for Indian firms expanding overseas. AI is already changing consulting Asked whether AI could replace consultants, Lim remarked the industry is already being transformed, with analysts producing in minutes work that previously took weeks. But she remarked AI would augment rather than eliminate consulting as strategy ultimately depends on individuals, culture and relationships. "It's not about does AI replace, but how does AI augment the thinking?" she remarked. AI, she continued, could free consultants to focus more on human relationships, culture and capability building. Add Now!

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