Artificial intelligence has quietly become part of daily life for India’s marketing teams. Forty percent of Indian workers already use AI-related skills on the job, and marketing departments are no exception. In fact, nearly eight in ten Indian marketers are experimenting with or have fully integrated AI into their workflows. These numbers aren’t surprising given India’s tech-savvy workforce and growing comfort with automation. In practical terms, this means many routine marketing tasks—drafting copy, analyzing data, targeting ads, and even creative design—are being done by or with the help of AI. Indian CMOs and startup founders say the effects are already tangible.
“Data and AI hold immense potential for enhancing customer engagement,” says Nishant Kalra, VP-Digital at Salesforce India. He points out that top-performing marketers are deploying diverse tactics to mine customer data and use AI to personalize campaigns. Yet Kalra also warns that trust and privacy remain crucial: marketers must balance AI-driven efficiency with the need to protect customers’ data. In practice, many Indian marketing teams are racing to do just that. Nearly half of Indian companies report experimenting with AI in marketing today, and about one in five say AI already has a high level of inclusion in their marketing plans. Another recent study found that almost nine out of ten B2B marketing leaders in India plan to increase their use of generative AI to improve efficiency and creativity.
Even as marketers scramble to learn the tools, the benefits are already clear. Rahul Talwar, Executive Vice President and CMO of Max Life Insurance, says AI is enabling much more personalized outreach. “By leveraging generative AI, we are crafting personalised experiences for customers,” he explains. For example, Max Life’s team uses AI to produce customized videos and messages for individual policyholders. These auto-generated assets incorporate each customer’s name, purchase history, or preferences—a level of one-to-one marketing that would be impossible by hand. “Our use of AI to create customised videos and messages has enhanced engagement by addressing each customer’s unique preferences,” Talwar notes. In another initiative, Max Life’s Mili chatbot on WhatsApp uses AI to answer policy queries in multiple languages and handle simple transactions. These AI-driven projects have strengthened customer loyalty by making interactions faster and more relevant.
India’s fast-moving consumer brands and digital platforms provide even more examples. Quick-commerce and e-commerce startups in particular are embedding AI into the user experience. Zomato rolled out a personalized food assistant that uses ChatGPT under the hood. It can answer questions like “What should I eat when I’m hungover?” and suggest restaurants or dishes based on the user’s mood and past orders. Its sister app BlinkIt introduced Recipe Rover, an AI recipe-suggestion tool powered by Midjourney and GPT-4, which not only recommends recipes but also lists ingredients and portion details. Similarly, Swiggy launched an AI recommendation engine called “What to Eat” that learns a customer’s tastes and then explains each food suggestion with a clear rationale. On the fashion side, Myntra partnered with Microsoft to build MyFashionGPT, a chat-based shopping assistant where users can ask for outfits (for example, “show me clothes for a beach vacation”) and get AI-curated picks spanning categories. In all these cases, the marketing and product teams use AI tools to generate content and recommendations that feel hand-crafted.
Behind the scenes, marketers use a range of AI software to do their jobs. For content creation, many teams now turn to ChatGPT or Jasper to draft social posts, blog outlines, or ad copy. One healthcare startup reported using ChatGPT daily to help brainstorm campaign slogans and even video scripts. Email marketers feed CRM data into tools like Salesforce Einstein to predict which subject lines will get the most opens, and to automate customer journeys. On the creative side, Adobe’s new generative tools such as Firefly allow smaller teams to generate ad visuals, digital artwork, or localized images in seconds. Engagement platforms such as India’s own CleverTap use AI-driven analytics to segment audiences and send targeted messages in real time, for instance, triggering offers if a user’s activity drops. The exact mix varies by company, but the trend is universal: AI copilot tools are becoming as ubiquitous as Excel was two decades ago.
Industry veterans say this revolution was inevitable given India’s favorable conditions. “AI has become quite deeply integrated in our daily lives, influencing various aspects of how we interact with technology,” observes Rohit Jawa, CEO of Hindustan Unilever. He notes that India’s huge mobile-first user base, low-cost data, and the government’s digitization drive create a fertile ground for AI-powered marketing. The local language market and massive e-commerce base mean there is rich data for training homegrown AI models. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen made a similar point at a recent summit, declaring that India’s next economic boom will be built on creativity “not in software code but in creativity” powered by generative AI. In other words, Indian marketers are poised to use AI not just for efficiency, but to craft more engaging stories and campaigns than ever before.
Even the tech leaders themselves attest to rapid AI adoption. Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu recently shared that he personally uses AI chat tools daily, often debating ideas between different models to deepen his understanding of a problem. Vembu’s comment reflects a broader shift: marketing teams today are no longer cautious pilots testing AI, but active drivers. They use ChatGPT for idea brainstorming and A/B testing headlines, Jasper for drafting newsletters, and even experiment with AI agents that can manage bidding in digital ad platforms.
This transformation is backed by hard numbers. A recent report of business leaders in India found that nearly three-quarters already use generative AI tools regularly at work. About 60% of those leaders even have a clear company strategy for AI. Another survey revealed that more than half of mid-career Indian professionals want more AI upskilling, and roughly one-third expect to use generative AI tools frequently in the near future. Taken together, the data paint a clear picture: Indian marketers are not lagging behind the global curve—they are often ahead of it.
Of course, the journey isn’t without challenges. Companies must ensure the AI outputs are accurate and on-brand, and avoid spreading misinformation or biased content. They also need to manage privacy and compliance, especially with India’s emerging digital regulations. Talwar of Max Life acknowledges that ethical use is crucial: his team carefully vets AI-generated material and maintains a human editor in the loop for compliance. But even here, many see a learning curve worth tackling. “We continue to run a lot of experiments,” says Sridhar Vembu of Zoho. He and others are ready to revise their strategies as the tools evolve.
What Indian marketers agree on is that we are only at the beginning. According to Rohit Jawa at HUL, AI is already helping brands connect with consumers in novel ways, but “we are just at the beginning stages of realizing the full potential of this technology.” The daily tasks that were once manual—writing copy, segmenting audiences, creating assets—are increasingly shared with AI copilots. As one Mumbai digital marketer put it, “AI has become like a junior team member that takes on the grunt work; it frees us up to focus on strategy and creative ideas.”
In sum, multiple recent surveys show roughly four in ten Indians and marketers now lean on AI tools every day. The result is a marketing landscape in India where AI-generated content, personalized experiences, and data-driven targeting are the norm rather than the exception. Industry leaders agree: AI is no longer a futuristic concept but a practical necessity. As Nishant Kalra puts it, leveraging AI and data is crucial for helping marketers outpace the competition. The technology may be new, but its role in Indian marketing is already substantial—powering what feels like 40% of the daily work and growing.
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