Artificial intelligence has been rapidly adopted in the Indian workforce, with demand for such professionals surging and a massive increase in salary gaps between skilled and non-skilled workforce
Indian professionals have been increasingly using AI tools in their daily jobs. 77% of Indian professionals said that they have been using AI in their work. The salary premium that people possessing skills related to artificial intelligence are earning as compared to others is quite alarming.
How Fast the Demand Has Grown
According to Naukri’s World AI Day Report 2026 survey, the share of tech job descriptions mentioning AI skills has risen to over 15% from 0.9% in 2020. It means that over the last six years, the demand for artificial intelligence skills has increased 17-fold in technology jobs. Apart from technology jobs, the demand for AI skills has also seen a massive upsurge by about six times in non-tech profiles and now includes almost 1.6% of non-tech job descriptions from merely 0.26% of job descriptions in the year 2020.
This report included more than three lakh job descriptions of several positions and about 27,000 job professionals working in over 80 different sectors and 15 Indian cities.
The Salary Premium
The pay gap between tech professionals working on AI technologies and their peers without related skills has widened sharply. It has been found that IT employees who work on AI receive an average annual salary of around Rs 13.7 lakh, while those who do not work on these technologies receive around Rs 11.9 lakh. Similarly, non-IT workers with AI skills earn approximately Rs 11.3 lakh, while non-AI professionals earn only Rs 7.5 lakh.
Where Hiring Is Heading
Employers are increasingly seeking specialised AI expertise rather than general familiarity with the technology. Recruiter searches for Retrieval-Augmented Generation skills grew 4.8 times year-on-year, followed by Azure AI at 2.9 times and Large Language Models at 2.4 times. Demand is also skewing senior, with AI hiring growing fastest among professionals with 13 to 16 years of experience, up 39% year-on-year.
The Training Gap
And while many of us are working with AI, just 35 per cent of professionals say they’ve had any AI training from an employer. A further 23 per cent have learned the hard way through self-study, while a further 21 per cent hope their organisation will soon implement learning schemes. Meanwhile, 79 per cent of respondents say they are currently in, or soon will be, training to upskill in AI – suggesting employees are leading the charge.
