AI, PRODUCTIVITY AND NATIONAL COMPETITIVENESS

For India, the question is simpler, how do we close the productivity gap with developed economies while scaling sustainably?

- By Raoul Nanavati

OVER THE past decade, India has built digital rails – identity, payments, and connectivity. It already has over 900 million internet users and 1.18 billion mobile subscribers. Aadhaar remains the world's largest digital identity system, with more than 1.43 billion IDs issued. UPI processes over 10 billion real-time transactions every month. The next phase is not digitisation. It is automation. And that shift will determine India's productivity growth over the next decade.

Productivity as a national power

AI is often discussed in terms of innovation, disruption, or valuation. It should be discussed in terms of productivity. The World Economic Forum estimates that AI could add up to $20 trillion globally in productivity. For India, the question is simpler, how do we close the productivity gap with developed economies while scaling sustainably?

AI is reshaping enterprise economics by automating high-volume decision loops in sectors such as BFSI and telecom, while significantly reducing cost-to-serve in customer operations. It is compressing turnaround times in critical functions like underwriting and compliance, and at the same time increasing monitoring accuracy in regulatory-heavy industries, where precision and oversight are nonnegotiable.

In financial services, telecom, government services, and MSMEs, these gains are not marginal. They are structural. Productivity, not experimentation, will define India's AI decade.

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