India Ranks 13th in AI Readiness

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Dil Bar Irshad | June 24, 2026 | 12:25 AM IST | AI & ML, Featured by VoM, World | Follow on Google News

India Ranks 13th in AI Readiness

London, 24th June 2026 [VoM News]: India ranks 13th globally for AI-economy readiness, according to a new report* from QS Quacquarelli Symonds, global higher education experts.

The QS World Future Skills Index 2027,* released today, finds that India has achieved exceptional system scale in the past decade, but must now ensure greater consistency of skills among its graduates to fully enjoy the benefits of digital transformation. * The link will be live once the embargo is lifted.

Nunzio Quacquarelli, President, QS, said: “The size of India’s digital workforce is rapidly attaining a scale that few other countries can match. It already possesses the world’s largest IT workforce, and the largest number of tertiary-educated individuals in the world. These ingredients give India the potential to be the fastest-growing economy in the world over the next decade.

“Our research suggests that a critical challenge is now raising the median quality of talent that its institutions produce, as well as addressing capacity hurdles. India’s National Education Policy 2020 is an ambitious attempt to address these challenges, but its implementation must now be scaled evenly across regions. Transnational education partnerships including branch campuses, and collaborative delivery models, complemented by its rising research strengths, can further support India to close skills gaps faster and expand global talent pipelines.”

The QS World Future Skills Index evaluates how effectively the world’s economies can develop, align, and apply skills in a fast-changing global economy. The Index assesses the readiness of 89 countries to harness the economic opportunities created by AI through a talent-supply and talent-demand analysis that combines QS’s proprietary data on higher education performance, skills gaps, and AI transformation with internationally-recognised third-party indexes.

The report is released as projections suggest that successful AI adoption could add $500 billion in economic value to the Indian economy by 2030.

Key findings include:

• India has been the fastest growing economy in the G20 for the last three years. India’s GDP growth, labour market investment, as well as its focused and continued investment in infrastructure is reflected in the country achieving the world’s highest score (100/100) for QS’s Economic Capacity sub-indicator.
• India represents one of the most significant opportunities for higher education globally. India ranks fifth globally for the Future of Workindicator, but only 18th for Skills Alignment. This disparity reflects a significant mismatch between India’s labour market transformation and its ability to produce graduates with the skills employers are demanding—AI, Green, Digital—at scale. With India’s AI-related investment reaching $90 billion by February 2026, relevant skills are key to driving affordable and accessible AI for public good. Green-talent is also required if India is to reach its net-zero carbon ambition by 2070. Closing the gap between skills demand and skills supply is also vital to transform India into a fully-developed nation in two decades as part of Viksit Bharat 2047.
• India now needs to ensure that graduate quality matches graduate quantity. India ranks 73rd for QS’s Human Capital Index indicator, highlighting that a critical strategic challenge for its institutions is ensuring that it can produce the highly-skilled graduates its economy needs at scale. India possesses the world’s largest IT workforce — some 5.8 million domain workers — however it is vital that the workforce continues to develop and acquire skills that will allow the digitally-trained workforce to further flourish.
• Of its peer lower-middle income nations, India is best-placed to accelerate growth and AI transformation. To allow institutions to understand their position relative to key local and strategic peers, QS’s research groups nations by location and income group. India is the runaway leader among each group, placing first in South Asia and first among lower-middle income nations. Its closest regional peer is Bangladesh (67th overall), while its closest peer in its income group is the Philippines (38th).

Key takeaways for institutional leaders include:

• ● The balance between AI-augmented and AI-automated jobs will play a crucial role in shaping India’s long-term economic competitiveness. Countries such as the US, Australia, the UK and Germany lead globally in workforce transformation not because they are adopting AI more rapidly, but because a greater share of their workforce is employed in occupations where AI enhances human productivity rather than replacing it. For India, sustained investment in future-focused industries, alongside the deployment of AI in sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, financial services and business services, will be critical to maintaining its competitive edge. At the same time, some of India’s traditional strengths may face disruption. Its large business process outsourcing and call centre industry is particularly exposed to automation, while the agricultural sector, which still employs a significant proportion of the workforce, offers fewer opportunities for AI augmentation than knowledge-intensive industries.
• Critical skills gaps persist, yet several countries have demonstrated that targeted interventions can narrow these gaps and strengthen workforce readiness. The QS World Future Skills Index shows that higher education systems are struggling to equip graduates for a rapidly changing labour market, with employer demand for AI, digital, and green skills increasing faster than traditional educational models can respond. This is not a challenge which universities can solve alone; it requires alignment across higher education policy, funding, curriculum governance, institutional agility, and employer investment in workforce development and lifelong learning
• The seismic nature of AI-driven transformation in industry is not being matched in scale or pace by change in higher education – and employers are frustrated. Leading economies on Future of Work readiness include the UK, US, Australia, Switzerland, and Germany. Yet the weak relationship between AI workforce readiness and graduate skills supply points to a need for higher education institutions to undergo significant transformation to keep pace with AI-driven shifts in workforce demand. This will require faster adaptation of programme portfolios, curriculum content, and institutional operating models

Supplementary Resources

• From promise to power: How AI is redefining India’s economic future (IBM, 2026) — successful AI adoption could add $500 billion in economic value to India’s economy by 2030
• Technology Sector in India: Strategic Review (Nasscom, 2026) — India possesses the world’s largest IT services workforce, numbering 5.8 million IT professionals as of 2026. Industry is worth $300 billion to the national economy.

Dil Bar Irshad

Dil Bar Irshad is a seasoned journalist, hails from Jammu Kashmir's Doda, covers political, social, business stories, index stories.