Inside APAC’s enterprise AI boom: Why India is emerging as a global AI powerhouse

As organisations across India and the Asia Pacific move from pilots to production, AI is becoming deeply embedded into business processes, operations, and decision-making. Enterprise AI adoption is accelerating globally, but few regions are moving as quickly as Asia Pacific. On the sidelines of SAP Sapphire 2026, Shipra Sinha, Senior Analyst, Industry Intelligence Group (IIG), CyberMedia Research (CMR), spoke with Varun Thamba, Head of Business AI, SAP APAC, about why APAC is emerging as one of the world’s fastest-moving enterprise AI ecosystems. Across APAC, AI is rapidly moving from experimentation to everyday business operations, reshaping finance, supply chains, manufacturing, and customer engagement. Driving this acceleration are digitally agile enterprises, fast-growing SMEs, younger workforces, and a strong focus on maximising technology investments. “AI is becoming a great leveller," said Varun Thamba. “You do not need a massive foundation or years of historical data anymore to