Entering calendar year (CY) 2025, enterprises face a complex environment characterized by macroeconomic uncertainty and rapid technological evolution. Yet, the outlook for CY 2025 signals a fundamental transformation in digital strategies, marked by a decisive pivot toward AI-first operations. Nasscom and Avasant’s study, Digital Enterprise 2025: Advancing to an AI-first Enterprise, assesses these digital spend transitions and highlights the strategic imperatives for businesses in this AI-driven future.

The study, based on an in-depth survey of over 500 global enterprises across 14 industries and all major regions, explores how organizations are navigating digital transformation on the path to becoming AI-first enterprises. The report offers a forward-looking perspective on how enterprises are responding to the challenges of a VUCA world. It provides critical insights into digital technology investments, evolving AI strategies, digital outsourcing models, and talent approaches that are shaping the next wave of enterprise transformation. With a five-year outlook, the study highlights the current barriers organizations face and outlines actionable recommendations to accelerate digital maturity. It also presents strategic opportunities for service providers and industry associations to support and enable AI-first transformation journeys.

The report provides a number of findings and recommendations, including the following:

• • Over 80% of the enterprises expect to continue to increase digital spending in CY 2025, a trend likely to get disrupted only in case of extreme trade and tariff barriers.
  • Eighteen percent of digital tech portfolio spend to be allocated for AI in CY 2025, up from 14% in CY 2024, while spending on mature tech, such as cloud, big data, and analytics tapers.
  • Seventy-four percent of the enterprises expect AI spend to increase in CY 2025; 20% expect it to stay as is.
  • Twenty-seven percent companies already report having AI agents in production or at scale, with another 31% at the proof-of-concept (POC) stage and 30% of companies are planning for POCs or beyond in CY 2025.
  • Companies are expected to spend three to four times more on AI agents in CY 2025 as a result of synchronous AI systems, while spend proportions of classical AI and generative AI decline in comparison.
  • India continues to the preferred outsourcing destination of choice across offshoring, nearshoring, and setting up of global capability centers. Eighty-six percent of global companies have or are planning a global capability center in the country in CY 2025.
  • There was a nearly 69% increase in companies that have less than 6% of total workforce in digital roles, likely due to limited to no compensatory backfills of upward movement of previously hired digital workforce.
  • A five-year outlook on AI-first transformation indicates the need for flexibility, modularity, and agility to embrace consumption shifts. Omnichannel digitalization, rising middle class, and Gen Z consumption dominance will drive the majority of consumption shifts through 2030.