SAP is placing India at the centre of its global artificial intelligence plans. Chief Technology Officer and Chief AI Officer Philipp Herzig said the country has become “clearly the heart of SAP’s AI strategy” as enterprise adoption rises and engineering work grows in Bengaluru. He said that India played a key role in developing Joule, SAP’s generative AI copilot. “India is where we built Joule,” he said. He explained that teams from ERP, HR, procurement and supply chain worked together at the company’s Whitefield campus to build the platform.
SAP reported that it delivered four hundred and forty one million euros in customer value through artificial intelligence this year. Its Document AI processed seven hundred and ninety million documents, which created an estimated two point six billion euros in gains for customers. Herzig said the company aims to scale further. “For a ten billion euro company, four hundred and forty one million euros is early days. I want to add another zero,” he said.
India is SAP’s largest development centre outside Germany. It also has its second largest workforce with seventeen thousand employees. Herzig said India offers a rare mix of engineering strength, domain knowledge and collaborative infrastructure. He added that this has helped SAP build one of the most ambitious artificial intelligence programmes in the industry.
SAP’s latest report shows that Indian enterprises are spending an average of thirty one million dollars on artificial intelligence this year, above the global average of twenty six point seven million dollars. The report found that ninety three per cent of Indian firms expect positive returns within three years. Companies already see a fifteen per cent return which is about five point seven million dollars. This is expected to rise to thirty one per cent, around fifteen point three million dollars, by 2027. Artificial intelligence currently handles twenty three per cent of business tasks in India. This is expected to increase to forty one per cent within two years.
Herzig said India’s rapid adoption makes it a key market for agentic artificial intelligence, which SAP expects to scale in 2026. Indian companies expect a seven per cent return which is about two point eight million dollars from agentic artificial intelligence within two years. Eighty five per cent see strong transformative potential. Customers such as JK Cement, ABB and a major IT services firm have adopted SAP Business AI and Joule to improve workflows.
SAP plans to expand its portfolio of more than three hundred Business AI use cases to four hundred by the end of 2025. This includes forty Joule Agents supported by a growing library of two thousand one hundred Joule Skills.
SAP is also working on natural language integration with firms such as Bosch and BITZER. Although it does not plan to build hardware, Herzig said robots could be guided by AI. The company is also preparing for quantum computing applications. Herzig said it is important to learn early even if hardware is still developing.
Responding to concerns about an artificial intelligence bubble, Herzig said both extremes are wrong. “The idea that AI will take over the world is nonsense. But the idea that AI is a bubble is also nonsense.” He said expectations are often misaligned because people “overestimate what can be done in a year and underestimate what can be done in five or ten.” He added that early experiments lacked the data and process foundations needed for scale. As these foundations grow stronger, he said the economic impact of AI will increase further.
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