Why the AI industry is betting on Forward Deployed Engineers
The Indian enterprise AI sector is shifting focus from model capability to 'Forward Deployed Engineers' who can integrate AI into complex business workflows. Despite high adoption rates, many companies struggle to generate transformative financial value due to limited budget allocation.
Why it matters
This highlights the 'implementation gap' in enterprise AI, where technical deployment does not automatically lead to business ROI.
A founder I spoke with last month had just launched a customer-facing AI agent. His problem was not the model. The model was fine. The problem was that the agent behaved unpredictably in a live customer environment, where even an occasional mistake carried real commercial consequences. His question was not “which model should we use.” It was, “why is making AI work inside a real business so much harder than building it?”
That question is going to define the next phase of enterprise AI in India. By the standard metrics, India is running ahead of the world on adoption. According to Deloitte’s State of AI in the Enterprise 2026 report, 40% of Indian organisations report significant or full AI adoption, compared with 28% globally.
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