Sushil Kumar Tripathi, VP (Technology), Kellton, shares how the Indian enterprises are moving from GenAI pilots to full-scale industrialisation in 2026.
For the past two years, the Indian enterprise landscape has been defined by curiosity. Boardrooms have buzzed with the potential of Generative AI, piloting chatbots and experimenting with isolated proofs-of-concept (PoCs). But as we enter 2026, the sentiment has shifted. The era of experimentation has ended; the era of industrialization has arrived.
2026 is not about adopting AI; it is about intelligent modernization. It is the year Indian enterprises stop asking “What can AI do?” and start demanding “What business value can we scale?” and “How does this rewrite our P&L?”.
Backed by a projected surge in IT spending, forecast by Gartner to hit $176 billion in India by 2026, this shift represents a fundamental maturity. It is no longer enough to bolt modern interfaces onto aging infrastructure. To survive the next decade, organizations must fundamentally rewire their digital core.
Here is the strategic roadmap for intelligent modernization in 2026.
1. From Assistive to Agentic: The Rise of the “Digital Worker.”
If 2024 was the year of the Chatbot, 2026 is the year of the Agent. We are witnessing a transition from Assistive AI (which summarizes data for a human) to Agentic AI (which executes tasks autonomously). Gartner predicts that by the end of 2026, 40% of enterprise applications will feature task-specific AI agents, up from less than 5% just two years ago.
For Indian enterprises in the BFSI, manufacturing, and retail sectors, this is a game-changer. We are moving from “human-in-the-loop” to “human-on-the-loop.” Imagine a supply chain system that doesn’t just alert a manager about a delay but autonomously reroutes logistics, updates inventory in the ERP, and negotiates a new delivery slot with a vendor agent.
The Leadership Shift: This requires a move from building static applications to designing agentic ecosystems, where software doesn’t just process data, it reasons and acts.
2. Solving the “Grey Estate”: Overcoming Technical Debt Bankruptcy
The biggest barrier to an agentic future is the “grey estate”, the sprawling legacy infrastructure that powers nearly 70% of enterprise transactions. Forrester warns that by 2026, many CIOs will face technical debt bankruptcy, where the cost of maintaining legacy systems will finally consume the entire innovation budget.
The 2026 modernization playbook has evolved. The “Lift and Shift” model is dead. Simply moving inefficient code to the cloud is no longer a viable option. Today, modernization is AI-led. We are using AI to interrogate legacy codebases, reverse-engineer business logic, and automatically refactor monolithic applications into microservices. This reduces transformation timelines by 40-50%, turning trapped data into the high-velocity fuel needed for AI agents.
3. Data Sovereignty as a Competitive Advantage
As AI integrates into the core, trust is the new currency. With the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act now in full effect, 2026 sees a massive pivot toward Private AI and sovereign cloud models.
Leaders are realizing that public LLMs are often insufficient for enterprise-grade precision. The future lies in Small Language Models (SLMs) and fine-tuned proprietary models that run within the enterprise’s secure perimeter.
Strategic Insight: Success in 2026 depends on “Right Data” over “Big Data.” This means curated, governed, and high-quality datasets that allow models to operate without leaking intellectual property or violating residency norms.
4. Product Engineering for the AI Era
The definition of a digital product is being rewritten. In 2026, successful products won’t just be tools users interact with; they will be adaptive platforms that learn from every interaction.
This demands a new tier of product engineering excellence. It requires hyper-agile development cycles where feedback loops are automated. It demands platforms built with “composability” in mind, where features can be swapped in and out as AI capabilities evolve. For Indian tech leaders, the challenge is to build architectures that are robust enough to handle mission-critical loads but flexible enough to integrate the AI breakthroughs of next month, not just last year.
The Path Forward: Architecture as Strategy
The message for 2026 is clear: Modernization is no longer a backend IT project; it is a business survival strategy. The winners will not be the companies with the flashiest AI demos. They will be the ones who did the hard work of modernizing their core, sanitizing their data, and engineering their products to be AI-native. They realized that intelligence isn’t something you buy off the shelf; it’s something you architect into your foundation.
As we move through 2026, the question for every Indian CEO is no longer about the “potential” of AI. The question is: Is your infrastructure ready to support your ambition?