93% of Indian CTOs say their role is evolving
HARYANA, INDIA — Nine in 10 Indian chief technology officer (CTOs) say their role has shifted beyond system management toward helping their organizations adapt to the future of work — and 81% feel pressure to move faster on AI than they can effectively measure its impact, per a new LinkedIn report, CXO Today reports.
Technology leadership has been redefined — not incrementally, but in real time
“With over 9 in 10 Indian CTOs acknowledging that their role has shifted toward helping organisations adapt to the future of work, technology leadership today extends far beyond managing systems and infrastructure,” said Malai Lakshmanan, Head of India Engineering at LinkedIn.
The report found 84% feel their role is being redefined in real time, with 79% now holding responsibilities not in their job description a year ago.
The pressure is time-asymmetric — 81% of Indian CTOs say business leaders are being pushed to move faster on AI deployment than they can effectively measure its impact, creating a decision environment where strategy outpaces evidence.
AI success depends on people, and Indian CTOs are restructuring around that
“As AI adoption moves from experimentation to scale, success depends as much on people as it does on technology,” Lakshmanan said.
“Employees need the skills and confidence to make AI part of how they work every day, which is why closer collaboration between CTOs and talent leaders has become essential,” Lakshmanan added.
Fifty-one percent of Indian CTOs identify stronger CTO-CHRO partnerships as the most critical factor for AI-enabled workforce transformation.
Fifty-six percent cite balancing long-term AI transformation with short-term demands as their primary challenge — and 79% say their organization’s decision-making is failing to keep pace.
The report names “prompt engineer” and “AI engineer” as India’s fastest-growing roles — categories that did not exist at the start of the AI adoption cycle.
India’s CTO data is the global BPO sector’s leading indicator — these leaders built the world’s largest IT services delivery engine, and when 81% say AI pressure is outpacing their measurement capacity, that stress transmits into client contracts.
For BPO and offshore staffing providers, the LinkedIn India CTO report is a demand-signal story, not a technology story.
The Indian CTOs leading TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and HCLTech structure every client SLA; when 79% say their organization cannot keep pace with their role’s evolution, that gap shows up in procurement cycles and contract renewals.
BPO providers that can demonstrate AI-enabled delivery — not a roadmap, but a live operating model — are positioned to answer the demand 81% of India’s tech leaders say is already outpacing their ability to measure.
