New Delhi, February 02, 2026: Indian enterprises are adopting artificial intelligence (AI) at a faster pace and deriving stronger business outcomes than global peers, but rising data infrastructure complexity and security pressures threaten to slow this momentum, according to a new report released by Hitachi Vantara, the data storage, infrastructure and hybrid cloud management arm of Hitachi Ltd..
The 2025 State of Data Infrastructure Report is based on a global survey of 1,244 business and IT leaders across 15 countries, including 104 respondents from India. The findings show that 89% of Indian organisations have either widely adopted AI or made it critical to their operations, significantly higher than the global average of 69%. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of Indian enterprises also rate themselves as strong or established in achieving return on investment (ROI) from AI, indicating that many have moved beyond pilot projects to enterprise-scale deployments.
However, this rapid progress is accompanied by growing operational strain. As many as 87% of Indian organisations report that data infrastructure complexity is increasing rapidly or faster, compared to 80% globally. AI investment in India is projected to grow by 75.6% over the next two years, outpacing the global average of 70.3%, while data storage requirements are expected to rise by 73.9%. Four in ten Indian organisations now manage between 50 and 200 petabytes of data, a scale at which infrastructure stress becomes more pronounced.
Hemant Tiwari, Managing Director, Hitachi Vantara, India & SAARC, said, “Indian enterprises have moved well beyond experimenting with AI and are now focused on delivering measurable business outcomes at scale. What’s becoming clear is that as adoption accelerates, infrastructure complexity is rising just as fast. The organizations that continue to pull ahead will be the ones that modernize their data foundations early, so AI momentum isn’t slowed by fragility, risk, or operational strain.”
Security has emerged as a major concern alongside infrastructure challenges. About 67% of Indian organisations cite data security as a leading issue in AI implementation. At the same time, Indian enterprises demonstrate stronger governance and leadership alignment than many global peers, with 81% reporting clearly defined executive AI visions, 79% having dedicated AI or machine learning teams, and 77% setting defined KPIs and business outcomes for AI initiatives.
Despite these strengths, the report highlights a growing readiness gap. While 55% of Indian organisations have reached managed or optimised data infrastructure maturity levels, the remaining 45% continue to operate with less mature foundations, making AI initiatives harder and more resource-intensive to scale. Only 32% report having predictive, automated and cost-efficient infrastructure scaling in place.
“The real bottleneck for AI isn’t the models, it’s when the data backbone lags behind,” said Sanjay Agrawal, CTO and Head Pre-sales, India and SAARC, Hitachi Vantara. “This report highlights that as Indian organizations operate at higher data volumes across hybrid environments, complexity and security risks increase rapidly.”
The study also points to talent shortages as a constraint, with 54% of Indian organisations citing difficulty in hiring skilled AI professionals. As a result, 76% are relying on external partners or outsourcing to support AI and data initiatives.
Overall, the report finds that 75% of Indian organisations report successful AI outcomes, driven primarily by workflow automation, data-driven insights and productivity improvements. Sustaining this advantage, the report notes, will depend on addressing infrastructure complexity, strengthening security and governance, and investing in scalable data foundations.
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