Indian retailers outpace global peers in AI adoption: Honeywell Survey

The nature of retailing is evolving. The most recent research reveals that artificial intelligence (AI) adoption is being led by Indian retailers. The survey of large retail enterprises found that 96% had adopted AI solutions in their retail operations, which is higher than the global average of 85%. 

The survey found that Indian retailers are using AI for demand forecasting and stocking, inventory management, delivery options, and customer service. The study notes that demand planning (50%), customer experience (41%), and logistics (41%) are the most common areas where organizations are focused on concentrated value chains and delivering their most value.  Compared to their global counterparts, Indian retailers were more likely to attach value to their investments in most uses of AI for demand planning (+14%) and logistics in the supply chain (+7%). 

"Retailers are seeking to leverage AI in order to better understand what customers want and how to meet their needs without prior knowledge of what they will want in a constantly changing market," said Ritwij Kulkarni, General Manager, Industrial Automation, Honeywell India. "In a large and diverse country like India, organizations can leverage AI once they have analyzed their data sets to create hyper-personalized customer experiences and enable the efficient movement of retail goods through the supply chain." 

Both in conjunction with AI but also using other advanced technologies, almost 68% of retail organizations in India use machine and camera vision while 64% are using or are ['experiementing'] with optical character recognition (OCR) for prices and price labels, and about 39% are using augmented reality (AR) as part of their shopping experience. These technologies are helping to tackle serious issues in the industry including but not limited to reduction in retail shrinkage, price tagging errors, and immersive shopping experiences which is required.

In addition to AI, retailers in India are also utilizing advanced technologies: 68% use machine and camera vision, 64% use optical character recognition (OCR), and 39% are testing augmented reality (AR). These technologies help solve problems that all supermarkets face, such as retail shrinkage, pricing and labeling errors, and immersive shopping experiences.

Even with this momentum, about half of Indian respondents (48%) pointed to customer acceptance as the biggest obstacle to AI adoption, compared to 40% for respondent overall. Regulatory compliance (43%) and the complexity of AI model configurations (38%) were also areas of concern.

The Honeywell report was conducted in May 2025 by Wakefield Research, which surveyed 450 executives of large retailers from the U.S., U.K., Germany, Brazil, India, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. The retailers surveyed in India had a minimum annual sales of $10 million.