Building trust with AI agents: India's blueprint for future of work

Time of India

a day ago

AI Appreciation Day
isn't just a celebration of innovation, it's a moment to acknowledge how artificial intelligence (AI) has matured from an emerging technology into a trusted contributor in the modern workplace.
The rise of GenAI showed us how models could create content, draft emails, or answer customer queries. Today, a more advanced evolution is gaining momentum:
agentic AI
. These are systems that don't just respond to prompts, they act on their own. They plan, decide, and execute tasks based on goals and context. In short, they work like colleagues. And just like in any effective team, success depends on how well each player understands their role, collaborates, and adapts in real time.
AI joins the team
Agentic AI is reshaping how we think about teams. No longer just a passive tool, AI is becoming a proactive participant in day-to-day operations; one that can plan, decide, and act alongside human colleagues. These systems are taking on routine tasks such as infrastructure optimization, customer service triage, and compliance checks. That frees up human teams to focus on strategic and creative priorities.
India is rapidly emerging as an epicenter for AI-agent innovation, underpinned by a maturing digital ecosystem and widespread executive buy-in. According to Cloudera's 2025 survey, in India, enthusiasm for AI agents is soaring: 84 % of organizations have deployed them in the past two years, 36 % just within the last year, and 98 % planning to expand their use in the coming year. Moreover, 78 % targeting significant organization-wide deployment, and 94 % recognize that investing in AI agents is crucial to staying competitive.
Across the nation, companies have spent the last few years building robust data strategies and experimenting with AI and machine learning (ML). They've invested in scalable infrastructure, broken down data silos, and demonstrated the value of AI in targeted business functions. Now, they're ready for what comes next.
Financial institutions in India are harnessing AI and machine learning to personalize customer experiences and enhance decision-making, while many banks are building data-driven cultures to boost efficiency and resilience. Telecom operators such as Vodafone Idea, are deploying hybrid platforms to reduce churn and enhance service delivery through intelligent analytics, and healthcare providers are leveraging large-scale data to inform diagnoses and streamline care workflows.
With this groundwork laid, agentic AI becomes a natural next step. These intelligent agents behave like specialists on a cross-functional team, autonomous, focused, and responsive. Just as a marketing lead, compliance officer, and IT engineer might work in parallel to deliver a campaign, AI agents can increasingly perform tasks autonomously while staying aligned with broader business objectives. With appropriate human oversight, they help monitor performance, detect anomalies, run software tests, and assist in resolving customer issues with enhanced consistency and speed.
What sets India apart is how quickly enterprises are turning this vision into reality. And this isn't experimentation for its own sake, it's a response to real business needs. In retail and e-commerce, 72% of businesses use AI for demand forecasting and personalization engines, and 67% leverage it to adjust pricing in real time. Manufacturers are deploying AI for defect detection (64%) and quality control (64%), as well as process automation (55%), enabling them to keep operations running smoothly and reroute supply chains mid-crisis. Across India, enterprises are applying AI not just to think faster, but to act faster.
The country's tech-forward mindset, digital infrastructure, and experience with AI give it a clear advantage in this new era of AI-powered teamwork. With foundational infrastructure increasingly in place, many Indian businesses are positioned to transition from AI experimentation to broader AI integration.
The foundation of every team is trust
As AI agents take on more responsibility, trust becomes non-negotiable. That means visibility into what agents are doing, guardrails to ensure accountability, and data governance built in from the start.
For many Indian enterprises, data still resides on-premises. That's why true hybrid platforms, which bring AI models to the data, rather than the other way around,are critical. It ensures agents can operate close to sensitive data without compromising security or compliance in hybrid, on-premises or cloud environments.
Enterprises are also embedding controls to monitor agent behavior, check for bias, and track the data lineage on how decisions are made. Because in any well-functioning team, transparency isn't optional, it's how trust is built.
Building the Teams of Tomorrow
The
future of work
won't be powered by humans or AI alone, but by the synergy between them. AI agents aren't replacing people; they're becoming essential teammates, amplifying our strengths and closing the gaps. To get started, businesses should focus on targeted use cases, invest in AI-ready infrastructure, and foster a culture where humans and machines work side by side.
So, as we mark AI Appreciation Day, let's look beyond technology. Let's celebrate the new team dynamic it enables,one that's smarter, faster, and built for what's next. Because in the modern workplace, the best teams aren't just human. They're hybrid and AI is fast becoming the MVP.