From the big buzz around Agentic AI — the next big thing after generative AI — 2025 promises to be the year artificial intelligence truly transforms the way we work and live. During his recent visit to India, Microsoft chief Satya Nadella talked about how we are entering the next phase of AI, moving beyond just admiring its capabilities to actually doing bold and big things.

Nadella touched upon how agentic AI would be transformative for businesses. Around the same time, at CES 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang too talked about intelligent AI agents that would work across sectors. Indeed, from Salesforce to Google to IBM, every tech company is talking about agentic AI — or action-taking empowered AI agents that can perform complex tasks, going beyond generative AI, which is mainly content focused.

Still early stage

But while these AI innovations are happening quickly, how geared are companies to adopt them?

Even on generative AI, the needle does not seem to have moved much, if you go by a recent EY India report. It says only 15 per cent of the enterprises surveyed had implemented GenAI in production, with 34 per cent having completed proof of concepts (POCs) and 11 per cent working on productionalising successful POCs. Eight per cent of those who had experimented with GenAI reported challenges in achieving a tangible impact.

“A significant 36 per cent of survey participants have yet to commence any experimentation, reflecting the early stage of adoption,” notes the report.

To deploy AI successfully, you need to be data ready. But barely 3 per cent of surveyed enterprises said they were ready.

So, what will it take for organisations to be AI-ready? Says Siddhesh Naik, Country Leader, Data & AI Software, IBM India & South Asia, “Basis my discussions with clients across industries it’s clear that implementing AI is complex, as it requires a range of factors to align.”

Key elements

“An AI-ready organisation,” Naik explains, “requires a convergence of key elements: a solid AI strategy, a strong data foundation, optimal infrastructure, skilled talent, and a governance framework. As we look ahead, every organisation should do a realistic readiness assessment to pinpoint strengths, weaknesses, and roadblocks. Following that, they need to work with technology partners to identify high-impact use cases, select the right AI tools, and re-engineer workflows for seamless integration.” 

Naik says the focus on AI is shifting from low-risk, non-core use cases, to deploying it in core business functions for higher productivity, competitive advantage and improved return on investment. According to IBM’s APAC AI Outlook 2025 report, the top areas where Indian businesses expect AI to deliver longer-term benefits are innovation (26 per cent), revenue generation (21 per cent), cost saving (12 per cent) and increased employee productivity (12 per cent).

While organisations are still grappling with buying the right AI tools, anecdotal evidence suggests employees are far ahead, investing in generative AI apps to help them with personal productivity. But as AI analyst Kashyap Kompella points out, “There are perhaps too many tools, numbering in the thousands. Don’t let the staggering choice confuse you. You can significantly increase your productivity by just leveraging 3-5 tools based on the kind of work you do.”

His recommendation for non-technical generalists is to get one LLM at premium subscription for ChatGPT, which comes with several built-in tools such as Dall-e for basic image generation. Other useful tools are Fireflies for online meeting note-taking and summarising, MacWhisper for audio transcription (on Macs), GPTZero for detecting AI-written text (handy for editors), and Perplexity for online research/ research summaries.

For specific tasks such as coding, app development, video development and so on, there are precise and exclusive tools.