88% Indian Organisations Open To Global AI Hiring: Report

Indian companies are employing people from outside India amid the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. In a research, the payroll and HR platform Deel stated that 96 per cent of companies are onboarding AI talent for C-suite positions, and 88 per cent are willing to hire from outside their country. According to the survey, around 70 per cent of workers in finance and technology companies are based outside India.

Companies have mentioned a number of barriers to recruiting AI expertise, including high salary expectations and intense competition.

The current demand-supply ratio for AI talent in India is 51 per cent, according to Deel's research, "India Business Leader Pulse Check: Workforce and Hiring." This gap is greater for positions like machine learning engineers, data scientists, DevOps engineers, and data architects.

According to Mark Samlal, general manager of Deel's Asia-Pacific region, “India's organisations are open to hiring from other markets (88 per cent), which can help to fill the AI sector skills gap now and allow skills transfer from global teams to the next generation of AI employees in India.”

Eighty per cent of the organisations questioned stated that they have been reluctant to hire AI talent due to excessive compensation expectations. Yet, 56 per cent of the respondents said that one of the biggest obstacles to luring AI expertise is the intense competition from other businesses.

Over 95 per cent of businesses either already integrate AI or are thinking about doing so. Product development (60 per cent) is one of the main business areas where organisations have shown a stronger intention to integrate AI, followed by human resources (56 per cent) and marketing (52 per cent), supply chain (50 per cent) and finance (49 per cent).

The study also revealed that businesses are utilising AI to reduce expenses. According to the poll, up to 62 per cent of the organisations reported utilising automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to optimise processes, and 61 per cent reported consolidating technology stacks to cut costs and simplify vendor relationships.

Rakuten Insight carried out Deel's research between June and July 2024, interviewing 250 Indian companies with more than a thousand workers in a variety of industries.