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India has emerged as one of the world's leading "Frontier" workforces, with 32 per cent of its AI-using professionals actively redesigning how work gets done with AI agents, double the global average of 16 per cent, according to Microsoft's 2026 Work Trend Index.
The findings place India at the top among the 10 markets studied by Microsoft and underline the country's growing adoption of AI not merely as a productivity tool but as a means of transforming how employees perform multi-step tasks and make decisions. According to the report, 78 per cent of India's AI users said AI is enabling them to undertake work that was not possible a year ago, compared with 58 per cent globally. Among India's Frontier Professionals, the figure rises to 85 per cent. Puneet Chandok, President, Microsoft India & South Asia, said in the report that India had moved from expressing its intent to build human-agent teams to actually implementing them at scale. "That's not a gap, that's a lead," Chandok said, highlighting India's comparatively high share of Frontier Professionals. The report defines Frontier Professionals as employees who use AI agents for multi-step workflows, rethink work around AI capabilities and establish shared standards for their teams. Microsoft said one in three Indian AI users now fits this profile, compared with one in six globally. The study also highlighted the importance Indian professionals continue to place on human judgment even as AI takes on a greater share of execution. Quality control of AI output was identified as an important skill by 63 per cent of Indian respondents, the highest among all markets surveyed, while 59 per cent identified critical thinking as a key skill. As many as 87 per cent of respondents in India said they remain responsible for the thinking process and regard AI-generated output as a starting point rather than a final answer. "Work is changing, not ending," Chandok said, pointing to the evolving relationship between employees and AI agents. Microsoft also found stronger leadership alignment on AI in India, with 44 per cent of respondents reporting leadership alignment compared with 26 per cent globally. Indian managers were also found to be actively using AI, encouraging teams to redesign workflows and creating space for experimentation. The report said agent workflows were operating at the functional level in 34 per cent of Indian organisations, compared with 26 per cent globally. It also noted that 25 per cent of Indian respondents said reinvention is rewarded even when it does not immediately produce results, against 13 per cent globally. "This is not faster work. It is new work," Microsoft said, describing the broader transformation underway as AI moves beyond isolated experimentation. The shift is also visible across large Indian IT companies. Microsoft said Infosys, TCS, Wipro and LTM collectively signed up for more than 400,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot seats in less than six months. At Infosys, Microsoft 365 Copilot has been rolled out to more than 100,000 employees, with monthly active usage exceeding 91 per cent. At TCS, 86 per cent of Copilot-licensed associates actively use AI in their daily work, while selected teams have reported productivity improvements of 20-25 per cent in research and content production. At Wipro, monthly active usage has crossed 95 per cent, with employees generating 7.5 million prompts a month. Microsoft said the company's AI adoption has contributed to more than 250,000 full-time-equivalent days saved every quarter. The findings indicate that India's AI advantage is being shaped not only by rapid technology adoption but also by workforce readiness, leadership alignment and continued human oversight, positioning the country as a potential blueprint for enterprise AI adoption globally. (ANI)
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