Google Cloud urges enterprises to focus on measurable AI outcomes at Leaders Connect India 2026

Discussions across Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru highlighted the shift from AI experimentation to large-scale deployment, with business leaders emphasizing economic value, operational efficiency and industry-wide transformation driven by agentic AI.

Google Cloud has concluded its Leaders Connect India 2026 series, bringing together business and technology leaders from sectors including banking, consumer goods, aviation, digital commerce, advertising technology and travel to discuss the next phase of artificial intelligence adoption in India. Held across Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, the three-city event focused on how enterprises can move beyond AI pilot projects and translate investments into measurable business outcomes.

A recurring theme throughout the series was what Google Cloud described as the “Economic Outcome Mandate,” reflecting growing pressure on organizations to demonstrate clear returns from AI initiatives. Industry leaders noted that boardrooms are increasingly shifting their attention from the capabilities of AI models to their ability to drive revenue growth, improve customer experiences and optimize costs.

Commenting on the evolving landscape, Sashikumar Sreedharan, Managing Director, Google Cloud India, said: "We are already in the agentic era, and what is non-negotiable now is clear business outcomes and economic value attached to every AI deployment. The challenge is to keep the best of the cloud and the best of the sovereign together. Technology today allows you to do exactly that. Products like Google Distributed Cloud bring the best of cloud flexibility and scalability to a customer's own premises. Those needs are coming up more and more, and it's a journey we are very much on with our customers."

He added that AI agents are increasingly being used to handle routine and repetitive tasks, allowing employees to focus on higher-value strategic work.

Industry leaders discuss AI at scale

The Mumbai edition of the event explored how agentic AI can help enterprises scale operations and deliver more personalized services. Participants discussed the opportunity to address India’s highly diverse consumer landscape through hyper-localized products, marketing and supply chains powered by AI-driven insights.

Conversations also focused on governance, risk management and the need for human oversight as organizations expand AI deployments. Speakers highlighted explainability, compliance and human-in-the-loop controls as essential requirements for enterprise adoption.

In Delhi, discussions centered on value creation across sectors such as aviation and digital commerce. Industry executives examined how AI could help improve operational efficiency, optimize resource utilization and reduce losses caused by disruptions. Participants also highlighted the challenge of connecting millions of buyers and sellers in India’s digital economy while maintaining trust and accessibility at scale.

Bengaluru highlights infrastructure challenges

The final leg of the series in Bengaluru focused on the practical realities of deploying AI at scale. Leaders from the travel and digital advertising sectors discussed the economics of AI inference, multilingual AI adoption and the growing importance of voice-based interfaces for India’s diverse user base.

Panelists identified Indian-language voice models, long-context conversational capabilities and privacy-focused AI architectures as key areas requiring further advancement. Discussions also underscored the need to reduce AI operating costs to enable broader adoption across large populations.

The event also highlighted real-world deployments of agentic AI. Google Cloud and Meesho announced a strategic partnership aimed at supporting the e-commerce platform’s next phase of growth. Meesho’s AI-powered shopping assistant, Vaani, built using Google’s Gemini models, has attracted more than 1.5 million users within its first month and has shown higher conversion rates among users interacting with the tool.

Across all three cities, participants agreed that agentic AI is rapidly evolving from a technology experiment into a strategic business capability, with the potential to drive innovation, productivity and long-term economic growth for Indian enterprises.