From AI pilots to everyday work: What are India’s IT giants doing differently?

Enterprise AI is moving beyond the pilot stage. At some of India’s largest technology companies, generative AI is no longer being tested for where it might fit into the workflow, it is increasingly becoming part of the workflow itself.

The India findings of Microsoft’s 2026 Work Trend Index show just how quickly that shift is taking hold. Some 32% of India’s AI users qualify as Frontier Professionals, employees actively redesigning how work gets done with AI agents, double the global average of 16% and the highest share among the ten markets studied.

“A year ago, India said it would build human-agent teams at scale. The data now says we are doing it,” said Puneet Chandok, President, Microsoft India & South Asia.

The change is also reshaping the nature of work. Some 78% of Indian AI users say AI enables them to do work that was not possible a year ago, compared with 58% globally. “This is not old work in a new bottle or old work done faster. It is net new work. That's why I say work is changing, not ending,” Chandok said.

As Chandok puts it, “The best people using AI today interrogate AI.”

The numbers are beginning to show up in enterprise adoption. Infosys, TCS, Wipro and LTM have collectively signed up for more than 400,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot seats in under six months, one of the largest and fastest enterprise AI rollouts for Microsoft. But the more significant shift is not the number of licences; it is how employees are using the technology.

At TCS, 86% of Copilot-licensed associates actively use AI in their daily work. Copilot is embedded into reporting, meeting management, documentation, analysis and knowledge work. Multiple teams report 20-25% productivity improvements in research and content production, twice-as-fast insight generation and a 25-35% reduction in work-cycle time on selected processes.

At Wipro, monthly active usage of Microsoft 365 Copilot has crossed 95%. Associates generate 7.5 million prompts a month and average 23 actions per user each week, translating into more than 250,000 full-time-equivalent days saved every quarter.

Wipro has also democratised agent building across its workforce. More than 29,000 end-user-developed agents and over 60 enterprise-grade agentic solutions are now in use. Its appraisal agent has cut performance-review effort by close to 70% through evidence-based goal tracking.

Beyond broad enterprise adoption, AI is being built into specific functions. At Persistent Systems, AI is being embedded into everyday HR workflows through AssIstX, a platform that brings HR services directly into Teams and Outlook, allowing employees to access support within the tools they already use. At Wipro, the iSkill Agent acts as a personalised learning copilot embedded in Microsoft 365 Copilot, recommending role-based AI and cloud learning paths for employees at enterprise scale.

At Infosys, the company’s charter to take Microsoft 365 Copilot to more than 100,000 employees is integrating AI into workflows across delivery, engineering and corporate functions. More than 91% of users are monthly active.

For Infosys, the next phase is about taking that adoption across the enterprise. Balakrishna D R, Executive Vice President and Global Services Head, AI and Industry Verticals, Infosys, said having a frontier workforce is only the starting point.

“Building a Frontier Enterprise requires more than technology. Organisations that are realising sustainable value from AI are those that combine leadership alignment, workforce readiness, governance, and intelligence embedded across the business. At Infosys, our experience shows that enterprise-wide AI adoption can help accelerate innovation, strengthen decision-making, and drive measurable business outcomes. The opportunity now is to move beyond experimentation and scale AI responsibly across the enterprise,” said Balakrishna.