New Delhi, June 15 (IANS) Around 53 per cent of Indian chief marketing officers (CMOs) projected 5–9 per cent incremental topline growth, against a global average of 43 per cent, the highest projection of any region in the survey, a report said on Monday.

The report from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) said Indian firms are taking direct ownership of AI investments, with 57 per cent of respondents saying that AI is funded by the marketing function, against 47 per cent global share, making India one of the most marketing-led AI investment markets in the world.

India leads globally in agentic commerce adoption, with 73 per cent of Indian CMOs ranking it among their top three strategic priorities, versus a global average of 63 per cent.

The report highlighted that 43 per cent of Indian CMOs said accelerating AI and digital transformation is their CEO’s top priority and their expectations of marketing have increased significantly over the past two years, placing India among the highest globally.

Around 52 per cent of CMOs expect generative AI to have a significant positive impact on personalisation, the highest across all regions surveyed.

The firm conducted an annual survey of 300 CMOs and found that while 96 per cent say AI is driving end‑to‑end transformation, only about a third have used agents at scale and just 8 per cent run campaigns where multiple AI agents operate autonomously.

Roughly 27 per cent of Indian CMOs reported that accelerating AI and digital transformation is their CEO’s number one priority, nearly twice the EMESA rate of 15 per cent and ahead of the North America average of 20 per cent.

“Ninety per cent of the CMOs agreed that GenAI is already reshaping how consumers discover and evaluate brands. But most marketing organisations are not yet built to compete in that environment,” said Mark Abraham, Global Leader, Marketing, Sales and Pricing Practice, Boston Consulting Group, and coauthor of the report.

“Investment must now move beyond individual AI tools and towards fully connected agentic operating systems built on strong data foundations, brand intelligence layers, multi-agent orchestration, and the right talent,” he added.

Around 88 per cent of Indian CMOs agreed that GenAI will help their teams sense signals and act in near real time, underscoring the speed imperative that defines India’s AI marketing agenda.

—IANS

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