Indian organisations are seeing returns from artificial intelligence investments, but their readiness to manage the risks associated with adoption is declining, according to Kyndryl’s 2026 Readiness Report.
The report found that 60% of Indian business leaders reported positive returns on AI investments, up three percentage points from 2025. However, average readiness to manage external risks fell eight percentage points to 27%, highlighting the growing gap between AI adoption and enterprise preparedness.
Only 35% of Indian organisations said they were completely ready to manage cyberattacks, down 10 percentage points from 2025. Globally, the figure stood at 26%.
Three in four leaders said AI helps their organisations identify threats faster, even as confidence in their ability to respond to cyberattacks has weakened.
The findings are based on a survey of 3,700 senior business leaders across 21 countries, including 200 respondents from India.
“As AI creates significant opportunity, organisations are now focusing on how to make early returns sustainable,” said Martin Schroeter, Chairman and CEO of Kyndryl. “AI ambitions are moving faster than the systems needed to support them, and the bar for readiness keeps moving as AI becomes more integrated in enterprises.”
The report found that 85% of Indian organisations are deploying AI in workflows beyond pilot projects, while the share still in the experimentation stage has declined 15 percentage points to 56%. However, scaling remains a challenge. Around 70% of leaders said their organisations have more AI pilots than they can realistically scale, while 58% reported that innovation often stalls after the proof-of-concept stage.
Infrastructure is another constraint. Although 71% of Indian leaders consider their IT infrastructure mostly or fully modernised, 59% said significant re-architecture is required to support AI at scale. Half of the surveyed organisations have also significantly changed their AI strategy over the past year, while 31% have experienced an AI investment failure.
The report also found that 37% of Indian organisations experience disagreements between their CHROs and CTOs or CIOs over AI strategy, pointing to organisational alignment as another challenge to scaling AI.