India’s AI Talent Pool Crosses 4 Lakhs in 2025: Quess Corp Report

Quess Corp, India’s largest and a global leader in staffing and workforce solutions, has released a landmark report titled “Decoding the AI Talent Landscape in India.” The report offers deep, data-driven insights into the country’s rapidly evolving AI talent ecosystem.

According to the study, India’s AI talent pool has expanded to 416,000 professionals in 2025. However, the ecosystem faces a massive 51% demand-supply gap, highlighting an urgent need for focused capability-building. Since 2017, AI hiring in India has grown 8X, evolving from generalist hiring to highly specialized, capability-aligned recruitment.

Job descriptions today increasingly prioritize stack fluency, production-readiness, and tool-specific expertise, reflecting the enterprise shift from experimentation to scalable AI deployments.

Key Findings from the Report

• AI Salary Surge: Entry-level AI professionals earn ₹8–12 LPA, while specialists in NLP and Generative AI with 5–8 years of experience command ₹25–35 LPA. Senior professionals, especially in product firms and GCCs, are earning ₹45 LPA+.

• BFSI Leads the Way: The Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) sector accounts for 24% of the total AI demand, followed by IT Services and Healthcare.

• In-Demand Roles: Data Scientists, Machine Learning Engineers, AI Developers, and AI Researchers top the hiring charts. There's also growing demand for AI Product Managers and Business Analysts who can translate models into business impact.

• Skills That Matter: Python continues to dominate, alongside frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, and Keras. Top skills include NLP, computer vision, Generative AI, cloud technologies (AWS, Azure, GCP), and MLOps.

• Tier-2 Momentum: While Bengaluru, Delhi NCR, and Hyderabad remain top AI hubs, Tier-2 cities now contribute 14–16% of overall AI demand. Kochi, Ahmedabad, and Coimbatore alone account for 70% of this Tier-2 growth, signaling the rise of distributed AI talent hubs.

• GCCs Drive GenAI Hiring: Global Capability Centers (GCCs) now account for 23% of India’s AI hiring, playing a pivotal role in shaping a GenAI-ready workforce.

Strategic Call to Action

“The emergence of AI isn’t just a talent shift — it’s a generational opportunity,” said Kapil Joshi, CEO – Quess IT Staffing. “Between March 2024 and March 2025, demand for AI and Data talent in India surged by nearly 45%. In emerging fields like GenAI engineering, there’s just one qualified professional for every ten open roles — a gap that signals not just a hiring challenge, but a strategic one.”

Joshi emphasized that India has the scale and capability to lead the global AI revolution, but to realize this potential, urgent action is needed. The report calls for:

• Strategic partnerships between academia and industry

• Tailored and scalable upskilling programs

• Bold policy interventions to align national talent strategies with GenAI-driven goals

With a massive youth population and robust technology base, India is uniquely positioned to become a global AI talent powerhouse. But the ecosystem must respond swiftly to bridge existing gaps.