Posted by Mumbai: Major Indian retailers are fully invested in artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to make operations more efficient, according to Honeywell’s Global Retailer Technology Survey. The survey reveals that 96% of large retailers in India are already using AI, with plans to either expand its use or maintain current levels. This figure stands well above the global average of 85%.
Indian retailers are leveraging AI in key areas such as demand planning, customer experience, and logistics, with 50% highlighting demand planning as a top beneficiary. Customer experience and logistics each scored 41% as areas where AI is making a significant impact. Compared to other regions, Indian retailers see greater value in AI’s role in demand planning (+14%) and supply chain logistics (+7%).
Honeywell’s survey also showed that technologies like machine and camera vision (68%) and optical character recognition (64%) are widely adopted by Indian retailers, while augmented reality (AR) is gaining ground with 39% adoption.
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) can significantly speed up retail workflows when replenishing the shelf inventory or identifying mislabeled prices by quickly reading labels and other product information. CV (Camera Vision) can help mitigate the growing challenge with retail shrinkage, while AR (Augmented Reality) can help shoppers or employees visualise a product in a space.
Despite the enthusiasm, Indian retailers acknowledge challenges in AI adoption. Nearly half (48%) expect customer acceptance to be the biggest hurdle, higher than the global average of 40%. Regulatory compliance (43%) and AI complexity (38%) were also noted as significant concerns.
“Retailers are looking to AI to better understand what their customers want and how to best meet their needs in a constantly changing market,” said Ritwij Kulkarni, GM of Industrial Automation – Honeywell India.
“In a country as large and diverse as India, AI has tremendous potential to create hyper-personalised customer experiences and optimise the flow of retail goods throughout the supply chain,” added Kulkarni.
The survey covered large retailers across the US, Europe, Latin America, India, and the Middle East. Indian participants had minimum annual revenues of $10 million. The research was conducted by Wakefield Research in May 2025, polling 450 retail executives worldwide.