Lenovo’s CIO Playbook 2026 reveals 99% of Indian enterprises plan AI investment increases over the next 12 months, achieving the region’s highest 19% year-over-year growth versus APAC’s 15% average, prioritising infrastructure, non-IT training and GenAI applications. Revenue growth, profitability and customer experience top CIO priorities, shifting from experimentation to outcomes-led execution with 88% expecting 2.8x ROI ($2.85 per $1 invested). Shailendra Katyal, VP and MD Lenovo India, states: “India’s AI journey reflects a builder mindset. With 59% actively adopting and budgets growing fastest regionally, enterprises prioritise infrastructure and workforce readiness.”
Hybrid AI architectures dominate at 90% preference, balancing performance, security and compliance amid data privacy demands and cloud costs.
Agentic AI interest doubles amid scaling challenges
Agentic AI usage will double, with 21% significant adoption today and 59% exploring limited deployments in telecoms, healthcare and government, though only 10% feel production-ready. Barriers include security, governance and integration, demanding measured scaling within workflows.
Inferencing emerges as the value engine, consuming 75% of compute by 2030 with 80% edge-distributed, while AI devices rank #2 IT priority alongside AI PCs comprising 50% enterprise purchases.
Enterprise priorities: ROI, productivity and infrastructure
96% APAC-wide plan increases, with non-IT funding 50% initiatives and adoption spanning service, marketing, operations and finance. India’s 59% active adoption trails slightly but accelerates via infrastructure focus.
Sumir Bhatia, Lenovo APAC President ISG, notes: “The differentiator will be integrating AI into infrastructure, operations and security for compounding value.”
CISO imperatives for agentic and inferencing scale
CIOs must address inferencing economics (15x training costs), employee productivity via AI devices and scaling where 50% proofs-of-concept fail production. Fan Ho, Lenovo APAC S&SG ED&GM, highlights agentic AI’s workflow embedding under governance.
