India leads the world in AI-driven leadership transformation: Microsoft

New Delhi: Indian leaders are moving with confidence and urgency to integrate AI across their organisations, with 93 per cent of those surveyed intending to use AI agents to extend workforce capabilities over the next 12-18 months, according to Microsoft's 2025 Work Trend Index.

Outlining the country-specific findings from the index, it said that India's most forward-looking organisations, what Microsoft calls Frontier Firms, are leading the charge in reimagining work.

"These firms are not just adopting AI; they're redesigning operations around human-agent collaboration," the company said in a release.

With 59 per cent of leaders already using AI agents to automate workstreams or business processes across entire teams, the shift from traditional hierarchies to fluid, adaptive structures is well underway, it said.

"This transformation is enabling organisations to scale with agility, speed, and purpose," it said.

Puneet Chandok, President, Microsoft India and South Asia, noted that India is firmly in its AI-first era, with AI agility accelerating at an unprecedented pace.

"We're seeing a workforce that's not just adopting AI, but embedding it into the fabric of everyday work -- leveraging its speed, precision, and 24/7 availability to drive meaningful transformation. Leaders are scaling operations with AI emerging as a true thought partner, fuelling creativity, fast-tracking decisions, and redefining collaboration," he said.

This shift is turning AI's promise into proof and profitability-powered by productivity, innovation, and a fundamentally new way of working, he pointed out. The sample size of the survey was 31000 participants across 31 countries. The findings were part of the global WTI survey.