Last week, I was speaking at two CXO level gatherings, and one thing was very clear to me in those meetings. Every organisation in the room… banks, insurers, consumer companies, manufacturers… had already begun using AI in some form. Some were running large programmes, others were experimenting in very targeted processes, but the direction was clear.
It brought to mind a very senior diplomat’s comment I heard a few years ago. He said, “India takes its time with step one, and then races through the rest.” That’s exactly how I felt hearing all the use cases being explored.
Meanwhile, the global markets narrative is heading in another direction.
In the US, the spotlight is on the AI providers… hyperscalers, chip companies, data centre builders. Their valuations look rich, their capex is enormous, and analysts can not decide whether we are in late stage enthusiasm or early stage worry. When you see gold and Bitcoin rising together, it tells you the market is reacting as much to emotion as to fundamentals.
But that is the bubble on top.
The real story… and the more durable one… is the shift happening inside companies here in India.
Not in the model building labs, but in the day to day work where AI actually proves its value… invoice processing becoming faster, code shipping with fewer errors, customer responses improving, frontline teams creating small tools that earlier required a full IT cycle. These are genuine productivity gains, not hype cycles.
And that is where India might surprise the world.
If global AI valuations look stretched, India’s advantage may come from being the user of AI, not the seller of it. Our scale, complexity and digital maturity give us more to automate, more to streamline, and more value to unlock. Even if markets correct for these tech companies, this part continues to move ahead… sometimes more strongly.
Long term investing is not affected by short term froth in a few global tech names. India’s markets continue to be driven by domestic flows, rising participation and strong fundamentals. That long arc does not bend because a handful of AI stocks overseas look overheated.
What I heard last week in these interactions is a different kind of momentum… the steady adoption of AI where it is more impactful… in productivity, efficiency and decision making.
For me, that is the theme worth watching… the one that will outlast every bubble, every headline and every correction.
Originally posted on LinkedIn on November 16, 2025.
Srinivas Jain 