It’s the 1st of January and the new year 2026 is now here. As enterprises brace for another year of rapid technology shifts, startup founders and industry leaders are drawing clear lines around what will matter most in 2026, from resilience and ownership of AI to trust, governance, and human-centric digital experiences.
Also read: Enterprise, Infrastructure, and Intelligence Converge as India Prepares for 2026
Recent global technology outages have sharpened the focus on operational visibility and preparedness. Rob Newell, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific and Japan at New Relic, points to a growing pattern of disruption across critical digital infrastructure. “Only 16 months after Crowdstrike brought the digital world to a standstill, and a month after the global AWS outage, this week another key player in the Cybersecurity space, Cloudflare, suffered a global outage causing error messages to plague websites across the globe, including Spotify, ChatGPT, X, and Open AI. Outages of this size can have significant impacts on an organisation’s bottom line. The 2025 Observability forecast found that high-impact outages can cost Indian organisations between $1M-$3M USD in lost revenue per hour. In the case of the recent global AWS outage, New Relic’s engineers were able to flag the issue 27 minutes before AWS informed their customers of the outage, enabling New Relic’s customers to identify the impacted services of their stack so they could address issues efficiently, and monitor golden signals within the failover environment to ensure its stability and performance. With global outages becoming more common, observability is no longer an engineering tool, it is business-critical practice.”
For AI-first enterprises, control and ownership are emerging as defining themes. Raj K Gopalakrishnan, Co-founder and CEO of KOGO AI, believes the coming year will separate companies that build durable advantage from those that merely consume tools.
“2026 is when enterprise AI separates into two categories: those who own their advantage, and those who rent it. The winners won’t be running the most AI tools, they’ll own their complete AI process IP. Every prompt refined, every workflow optimized, every fine-tune deployed, that’s compound interest on your competitive advantage, and you can’t build it on borrowed infrastructure. We’re past the co-pilot era. Enterprises are waking up to a hard truth: sovereign deployment isn’t a compliance checkbox, it’s your moat. The moment your AI logic, your data, your improvement cycles live in someone else’s environment, you’re training their models and funding your competitor’s advantage. By 2026, Chairmen won’t ask ‘should we do AI’, they’ll ask ‘do we own the OS, own the agent, own the outcome, or are we just licensing our future from someone else’s cloud?’ Private AI isn’t a trend. It’s the control plane for building an advantage that actually compounds.”
Within enterprises, AI systems themselves are expected to evolve beyond fragmented tools. Praveer Kochhar, Co-founder and CPO at KOGO AI, sees a decisive move away from tool overload toward governed, execution-ready systems. “2026 marks the death of context switching in the enterprise. The tool sprawl era, 15 co-pilots, 30 browser tabs, swivel-chair between systems, ends when unified agentic systems prove they can execute work across ERP, CRM, ITSM, and data lakes without human glue. But autonomy without governance is chaos. The technical shift isn’t just agents that can act, it’s architectures where policy enforcement, human-in-the-loop gates, drift detection, and audit trails are built into the runtime, not bolted on after deployment. We designed KOGO OS around this principle before we wrote a single line of agent code: Responsible AI as the foundation, not the afterthought.
By 2026, enterprises demand agentic meshes, cross-functional agents with shared memory, coordinated handoffs, and measurable SLAs, running inside their walls. The architecture question shifts from ‘can AI do this task’ to ‘can our OS govern agents that plan, act, verify, and learn autonomously while respecting our policy at runtime?’ That’s not a co-pilot. That’s an operating system for AI-native work.”
In business process services, GenAI is expected to reshape core operations rather than sit at the edges. Anand Sampath, EVP, CEO of BPS and Head of India Delivery Center at Visionet Systems, outlines how automation and intelligence will converge. “GenAI is set to transform BPS and the technology landscape by reshaping how enterprises operate, make decisions, and deliver value. By automating routine, document-heavy work and enabling self-optimizing workflows, GenAI will accelerate intake, summarization, quality checks, compliance reviews, and exception handling, cutting operational cycle times by 30–50% while improving accuracy and consistency. This shift allows human talent to focus on higher-value, judgment-intensive activities, strengthening overall operational resilience. In the mortgage lifecycle, GenAI is expected to deliver major efficiency gains across Origination, Underwriting, Title, Settlement, and Servicing. AI will automate ingestion and validation of income, asset, title, and closing documents, predict conditions, flag discrepancies, and streamline compliance checks reducing cycle times by 25-40% and enabling teams to handle exceptions rather than routine tasks.
AI-powered IDP platforms like DocVu.AI will be central to this transformation. By intelligently extracting, classifying, validating, and summarizing data across all loan documents, DocVu.AI improves decision-making, enhances QC, and ensures audit readiness at scale. With continuous learning and real-time insights, it reduces manual review significantly while elevating underwriting and post-close precision. Together, GenAI, BPS expertise, and platforms like DocVu.AI will create a semi-autonomous, exception-driven mortgage ecosystem that delivers faster, higher-quality, and scalable operations.”
Manufacturing leaders see 2026 as a continuation of shifts that gathered momentum over the past year. Kshitij Tiwari, Founder and CEO of ideazmeet, highlights the role of trusted digital networks. “2025 has been a watershed year for global manufacturing – a year in which supply chain resilience, digital sourcing, and trusted networks shifted from strategic priorities to operational imperatives. As businesses navigated geopolitical shifts, production realignments, and rising buyer expectations, the ability to discover verified partners, move quickly, and operate with transparency emerged as a true competitive advantage. At ideazmeet, we witnessed manufacturers and MSMEs step confidently onto the global stage, leveraging digital visibility and intelligent matchmaking to unlock new markets and forge stronger partnerships. The momentum around India as a reliable manufacturing destination has never been more tangible, driven by China+1 strategies taking firm shape and domestic manufacturers scaling their capabilities to meet growing global demand. As we step into 2026, manufacturing is entering a phase defined by deeper integration, smarter platforms, and ecosystem-led growth. The future belongs to connected manufacturing networks that blend technology with trust, data with decision-making, and speed with accountability. Technology will play an even more critical role in enabling resilient supply chains, smarter procurement, and large-scale cross-border collaboration. For India, this represents a historic opportunity to position itself as the world’s most reliable and digitally accessible manufacturing partner and live the “Make in India – for the World” dream. At ideazmeet, our mission is to empower manufacturers with global visibility, simplify sourcing for global buyers, and build a truly borderless manufacturing network driven by trust, efficiency, and long-term value.”
India’s global capability centres are also entering a more mature phase. Piyush Kedia, Co-Founder and CEO at InCommon, says boards are starting to measure outcomes, not headcount.
“2025 has been a turning point year for India’s GCC story. We’ve moved firmly beyond the old ‘back office’ narrative. The most interesting work we see now is product, data, and AI sitting inside India pods that own real outcomes, not just volume. At the same time, the external climate has shifted. Tighter U.S. visa proposals like the H-1B changes and the HIRE Act have created uncertainty for both companies and Indian professionals abroad. Many firms are now treating India as a primary build location, not a backup, and we’ve seen that directly in inbound interest.
On the ground, 2025 has been about getting the basics right: manager depth, security baselines, and cleaner operating cadence across hybrid teams. GCCs that invested in these fundamentals are already handling more strategic work. Looking to 2026, I expect three clear trends. First, more mid-market and PE-backed companies will set up ‘India-first’ pods for AI, data, and platform work. Second, hub-and-spoke models will mature, with Tier-2 cities becoming a serious part of the talent strategy, not just a cost play. Third, boards will increasingly measure GCCs on business impact – revenue, reliability, and innovation – rather than headcount alone. At InCommon, we believe that the next phase will belong to companies that treat India like an extension of HQ – with the same bar for leadership, security, and execution. If India can keep pairing capability with predictability, GCC 2.0 will be built here.”
Consumer-facing services are also being reshaped by expectations of transparency and speed. Debidutt Acharya, Co-Founder and COO at One800, says trust will define the next phase of device care. “The mobile repair industry in India is experiencing a decisive shift from unorganised, opaque servicing to technology-led, trust-first experiences. Consumers today are far more aware, price-conscious, and protective of their data, and they expect complete visibility into how their devices are handled. This year has marked a strong growth phase for One800 as we scaled from a promising concept to a structured, tech-enabled repair ecosystem with real national ambitions. Our aim of providing lab-quality repair services with absolute transparency through our Live Repair streaming feature has finally become a reality and is being deeply appreciated by our customers. With increasing consumer demand for reliable, transparent, and fast mobile repair services, we have seen strong traction across models, categories, and repeat usage. Our controlled repair labs, certified technicians, and live repair technology have helped us earn trust at scale, something that is critical in a service as sensitive as device care.
As we move into 2026, device care will no longer be a back-end service, it will become a full-fledged, tech-enabled consumer experience. The next phase will be defined by faster repairs, deeper transparency, tighter data security, and seamless integration across repairs, warranties, insurance, and refurbished devices. One800 will firmly focus on expansion, deeper technology integration, and building the brand as India’s most trusted repair backbone. With plans to scale across multiple cities, strengthen supplier partnerships, and expand into adjacent categories like laptop repairs, we are gearing up for our next phase of accelerated growth.’’
In marketing and brand building, technology leaders expect AI to amplify authenticity rather than replace it. Vishal Rajani, Founder and CEO of Synergos, believes 2026 will reward brands that combine intelligence with empathy. “As the founder of a digital marketing company that’s empowered hundreds of brands to connect with their customers, here’s my unfiltered take on what actually wins in 2026. India is catapulting towards digital dominance, and it is set to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2027. The upcoming year (2026) demands a major shift in digital marketing strategies as AI is suddenly everyone’s new best friend. 2026 won’t be about “using AI.” It will be about leveraging AI that knows your customer and anticipates their needs like a sixth sense. Cookie-cutter campaigns are dead. We’re talking hyper-personalized experiences at scale: dynamic creatives, pricing, even product recommendations that shift in real-time based on mood, weather, and wallet thickness.”
He adds that search and discovery are already changing shape. “Here’s where the world will move from SEO to GEO or Generative Engine Optimization: the new sheriff in town. With AI-powered search engines like Gemini and Perplexity, brands will have to optimize for conversational queries, not merely keywords. This means creating digital marketing content that answers the “whys” and “hows” in real-time, capturing voice and visual searches. If content in 2026 isn’t written to be quoted, summarized, and cited by Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, brands will have a tough time existing in an AI-driven market. Brands that master conversational, citation-worthy content will own the marketing funnel.
And yet, the biggest paradox is already playing out. The more advanced the technology, the more desperately people crave the human touch. We expect to see digital marketing moving towards raw, community-fueled storytelling. For example, Zomato’s user-generated victory feasts during cricket matches, where fans post mukbangs of samosas and biryani, turned meals into community celebrations of national pride. Combine this with transparent data practices, and brands won’t just earn attention, they’ll grab devotion and amplify genuine human connections over scripted perfection. In India, 2026 belongs to digital marketers and brands brave enough to use AI as a megaphone to tell authentic stories that resonate with the common man. For Indian marketers, the era of shouting into the void is dead. Build trust, own your data, speak with empathy, build genuine connections and let AI amplify the magic.”
