A clear shift in how generative AI is being adopted at work is visible in India, with software and web development emerging as the primary drivers of usage.
According to Anthropic’s latest Economic Index report, released on January 15, India now ranks No 2 globally in overall Claude.ai usage, trailing only the US. Usage remains concentrated in a limited group of countries, which also includes Japan, the UK, and South Korea.
The report shows that technical work dominates how Claude.ai is used in India. Around 45.2% of total usage is linked to computer and mathematical tasks. Anthropic noted that 5 of the top 10 use cases in the country fall under software and web development, pointing to growing reliance on AI for routine coding, testing, and debugging.
Web development stands out as a particularly strong area. Indian users are 2 times more likely than the global average to use Claude for CSS, HTML, and UI styling tasks. They are also 1.7 times more likely to depend on the tool for building and debugging web applications, highlighting the depth of hands-on developer usage in the country.
Beyond core development, the report identified several emerging technology-related applications where Indian usage is higher than the global norm. Indian users are 1.5 times overrepresented in building AI systems such as chatbots and workflow automation tools. Database administration and data engineering tasks also feature strongly, with usage levels running 1.4 times above the global baseline.
Claude.ai is not limited to technical work alone. Anthropic said the platform is also being used widely for job searching and professional development in India. Academic work across STEM subjects and business planning for entrepreneurial ventures are also among the notable use cases.
Despite ranking high in absolute usage, the report highlighted a gap when usage is measured against population size. Anthropic’s AI Usage Index, which compares usage intensity with the working-age population, places India at 0.22. This indicates that Claude.ai usage in India is lower than expected relative to its population, even though the country ranks near the top globally.
The findings suggest that while India is already a major market for generative AI tools, there is significant room for broader and deeper adoption across the workforce.
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