Fireblaze Fireblaze AI Career Intelligence
AI Skill Index™
of India
What the published research actually says about AI skills, hiring and pay in India. Every figure names its source, its date and the group it was measured on.
Last reviewed 2026-10-13 • Reviewed when major sources publish new editions. Each figure carries the date of the source it came from, not the date of this page.
October 2026 edition • Press kit, embeddable charts and open data
How to read this index
- Every number on this page names its source, its date, and the population it was measured on.
- We do not publish a composite score. The underlying figures come from surveys, job-posting indices, platform data and company announcements, which cannot be responsibly weighted into one number.
- We separate what was measured from what was projected. A forecast is always labelled as a forecast.
- Where we could not find a credible source, we say so instead of estimating. The gaps list is published alongside the data.
- Vendor-announced numbers are labelled as self-reported. Where a source has a commercial interest in the thing it measures, we disclose it.
01 • Hiring
AI Hiring Index
AI/ML roles rose 20% year on year on Naukri in September 2026, the largest increase among the sectors and segments in Naukri's headline chart, while overall white-collar hiring rose 2% and IT and software services hiring fell 4%. Measured Naukri (Info Edge), 2026-10-06
Share of Indian job postings that mention AI
The clearest trend line available for India. Indeed's analysts caution that Indeed's India data skews toward the tech sector, so these shares are higher than the whole labour market. We found no newer India-wide point: Indeed's later 2026 India figures that we could find measure job titles and occupational categories, not the share of postings.
Measured Indeed Hiring Lab, 2025-10-25Indeed and NASSCOM, 2026-05-22
Share of postings mentioning AI, by occupation
Postings mentioning AI, September 2025.
| Data and analytics | 38.6% | |
| Software development | 22.8% | |
| Insurance | 18.2% | |
| Scientific research | 17.0% | |
| Industrial engineering | 17.0% | |
| Mechanical engineering | 11.0% | |
| Electrical engineering | 9.2% |
Healthcare and retail are not broken out by this source. Indeed Hiring Lab, 2025-10-25
Fastest-growing jobs in India
LinkedIn ranks these by growth rate, not by volume, and does not publish a growth percentage for India. The rank shift between two editions of the same methodology is the meaningful signal.
| Role | 2026 rank | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Prompt Engineer | #1 | New entry at number 1 |
| AI Engineer | #2 | Up 10 places |
| Manager of AI | #4 | New entry |
Only three AI roles appear in India's top 25. Data Scientist, Data Engineer, Data Analyst and Machine Learning Engineer do not appear on India's list at all. A fast-growing job title is not the same as a high-volume one.
LinkedIn News India, 2026-01-08 LinkedIn News India, 2025-01-15
Sectors where hiring fell
September 2026 vs September 2025.
| Education | -18% |
| Telecom | -12% |
| Hospitality and travel | -11% |
| IT and software services | -4% |
| Pharma and biotech | -4% |
| FMCG | -4% |
| Healthcare | -3% |
| Oil and gas | -1% |
IT and software services hiring fell 4% in September while AI/ML hiring rose 20%. The AI growth is a narrow band inside a flat to falling sector, not a general IT hiring boom. The same sector had grown 6% in July and 11% in August, so one month is not a trend.
Hiring change by experience level
September 2026 vs September 2025.
| 0 to 3 years | +1% | |
| 4 to 7 years | -2% | |
| 8 to 12 years | +5% | |
| 13 to 15 years | +7% | |
| 16 years and above | +5% |
Mid-career hiring at 4 to 7 years was the only band that fell. Naukri says demand 'continued to remain stronger for experienced professionals'.
Hiring growth by month, June to September 2026
| Month | Overall white-collar | AI/ML roles | IT and software services |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 2026 | +6% | +25% | -3% |
| Jul 2026 | +5% | +33% | +6% |
| Aug 2026 | +14% | +31% | +11% |
| Sep 2026 | +2% | +20% | -4% |
Monthly growth swings widely, so no single month is a trend. Info Edge's CEO said August's growth 'needs to be viewed in the context of the festive calendar', with more of the festive period falling in August last year and shifting to September this year. Within IT, Naukri reports AI/ML hiring grew 11% in September even as overall IT hiring fell 4%.
Measured Naukri (Info Edge), 2026-10-06
AI/ML hiring by experience, September 2026
| Freshers | +19% |
| 4 to 7 years | Stable |
| 8 to 12 years | +28% |
| 13 to 16 years | +54% |
Naukri says demand for AI/ML talent 'continued to be higher among experienced professionals'. In August it reported AI/ML hiring for people with 16 or more years of experience grew more than twofold, but it gave no September figure for that band.
Measured Naukri (Info Edge), 2026-10-06
02 • Skills
Top AI Skills
Developer tool usage
Percentage of respondents who report extensive development work with each technology over the past year.
| Docker / Docker Compose | 59.1% | Cloud and infrastructure question, 10,889 respondents. Not compared with 2025: the 2026 question lists cloud platforms, containers, package managers and build tools together. | |
| SQL | 58.4% | Languages question, 14,099 respondents. 58.6% in 2025. | |
| Python | 58.0% | Languages question, 14,099 respondents. 57.9% in 2025. | |
| AWS | 41.8% | Cloud and infrastructure question, 10,889 respondents. | |
| Azure | 25.1% | Cloud and infrastructure question, 10,889 respondents. |
Measured Stack Overflow, 2026-10-06 • Stack Overflow's 2026 Developer Survey, 30,903 self-selected respondents across 169 countries. Each question has its own respondent count: the languages question had 14,099 respondents (SQL, Python) and the cloud and infrastructure question had 10,889 (Docker, AWS, Azure).
India skill signals
Where India-specific evidence exists. Expand any skill for the full figure and its source.
QueryingRanked the number 1 fastest-growing engineering skill in India
Ranked the number 1 fastest-growing engineering skill in India. Measured
LinkedIn publishes a rank order only, with no growth percentage or denominator.
LLMOpsRanked number 4 among fastest-growing engineering skills in India
Ranked number 4 among fastest-growing engineering skills in India. Measured
Rank only.
Workflow automationRanked number 5 among fastest-growing engineering skills in India
Ranked number 5 among fastest-growing engineering skills in India. Measured
Rank only.
AutoMLRanked number 9 among fastest-growing engineering skills in India
Ranked number 9 among fastest-growing engineering skills in India. Measured
Rank only.
Machine learningAI/ML hiring rose 20% year on year in September 2026, after rising 33%...
AI/ML hiring rose 20% year on year in September 2026, after rising 33% in July and 31% in August. Measured
Generative AIIndia leads the world on relative AI skill penetration at an index of ...
India leads the world on relative AI skill penetration at an index of 3.0, meaning AI skills appear on Indian member profiles at three times the global average. Measured
Derived from LinkedIn member profiles. The United States is second and Germany third.
AI agents26.2% of respondents (4,582 of 17,464) use AI agents or automated work...
26.2% of respondents (4,582 of 17,464) use AI agents or automated workflows in their role at work. Measured
Global, not India. A different question from the 2025 agent figure, so we do not compute a change.
AI coding agents90% of professional developers use AI coding agents at work at least w...
90% of professional developers use AI coding agents at work at least weekly, and 68% use them daily (May to July 2026). Measured
Global, not India. Quota-sampled and reweighted by JetBrains, which sells developer tools.
LangChainUsed by 30.2% of the 4,400 respondents who answered Stack Overflow's a...
Used by 30.2% of the 4,400 respondents who answered Stack Overflow's agent-orchestration question (1,329 respondents). Measured
Global, and a self-selected subgroup: only people who answered that question are counted. It is not an adoption rate across all developers.
MCP (Model Context Protocol)More than 10,000 published MCP servers
More than 10,000 published MCP servers. Measured
An industry consortium claim, not an independent count. No credible adoption percentage exists.
Skills we could not score
These appear on every list of in-demand AI skills. None of them has a source we would publish.
Power BI
No authoritative, dated, methodologically transparent source measures Power BI skill demand, in India or globally. Job-board listing counts are snapshots that include duplicates. A widely-copied claim that Power BI appears in 72% of Indian data analyst jobs has no named dataset, sample or date behind it, so we do not repeat it.
Deep Learning
No major source tracks deep learning as a skill distinct from wider AI and machine learning categories. Publishing a number here would mean inventing one.
Wider context
- AI and big data ranked the number 1 fastest-growing skill worldwide for 2025 to 2030 Projection World Economic Forum, 2025-01
- About 39% of workers' core skills are expected to be transformed or outdated by 2030 Projection World Economic Forum, 2025-01
- Generative AI course enrolments rose 234% year on year, the fastest-growing skill in Coursera's history Measured Coursera, 2026-01-21
Measured among enterprise learners whose employer bought Coursera, not the general workforce. - India's AI talent concentration grew 120% between 2019 and 2025, the second fastest globally Measured Stanford HAI, 2026-04-13
- India recorded a net AI talent outflow of -16.9 in 2025, the largest of any country measured Measured Stanford HAI, 2026-04-13
03 • Pay
Salary Intelligence
By experience level
| Experience | Average Total Compensation | Sample | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1 year | ₹5,95,255 | 5.95 lakh | |
| 1 to 4 years | ₹10,05,147 | 10.05 lakh | |
| 5 to 9 years | ₹18,37,657 | 18.38 lakh | |
| 10 to 19 years | ₹25,08,304 | 25.08 lakh | |
| 20 years and above | ₹23,34,782 | 23.35 lakh |
All experience levels: ₹10,17,652 • total sample n=1267 • PayScale, 2026-07
Every band reconciles exactly against its stated percentage difference from the role average.
| Experience | Average Total Compensation | Sample | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1 year | ₹4,58,375 | 4.58 lakh | |
| 1 to 4 years | ₹6,24,094 | 6.24 lakh | |
| 5 to 9 years | ₹10,98,353 | 10.98 lakh | |
| 10 to 19 years | ₹12,06,283 | 12.06 lakh | |
| 20 years and above | ₹16,75,832 | 16.76 lakh |
All experience levels: ₹7,42,591 • total sample n=970 • PayScale, 2026-07
The most internally consistent experience table in this dataset.
| Experience | Average Total Compensation | Sample | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1 year | ₹4,13,462 | 4.13 lakh | n=576 |
| 1 to 4 years | ₹5,65,999 | 5.66 lakh | n=1588 |
| 5 to 9 years | Not published | +46% versus the role average | |
| 10 to 19 years | Not published | +86% versus the role average | |
| 20 years and above | Not published |
All experience levels: ₹5,77,472 • total sample n=2389 • PayScale, 2026-07
Only the early bands have retrievable rupee figures. For the later bands the source publishes a percentage difference from the role average but not an absolute figure, and we do not multiply it out, because that would be our arithmetic rather than the source's.
| Experience | Average Total Compensation | Sample | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1 year | ₹5,96,082 | 5.96 lakh | n=39 |
| 1 to 4 years | ₹8,40,657 | 8.41 lakh | n=156 |
| 5 to 9 years | Not published | +102% versus the role average | |
| 10 to 19 years | Not published | +184% versus the role average | |
| 20 years and above | Not published |
All experience levels: ₹10,22,861 • total sample n=232 • PayScale, 2026-07
Same limitation as Data Analyst. Early-band samples are small at 39 and 156 respondents.
Average base salary, all levels
| Data Scientist | ₹12,28,136 | n=310 |
| Cloud Engineer | ₹11,06,748 | n=95 |
| Business Analyst | ₹9,02,187 | n=624 |
| Data Analyst | ₹6,23,556 | n=551 |
Indeed India, 2026-10 • Pages updated 1 to 5 October 2026 and read on 13 October 2026. Samples differ between visits: Data Scientist had 502 salaries at our July review and 310 now, so a change in an average partly reflects a different sample.
Role ranges
| Role | Entry / range | Senior |
|---|---|---|
| AI / Machine Learning Engineer The two editions of this survey disagree on the fresher figure: the FY2024-25 edition put AI/ML entry at 8.2 lakh, the FY2025-26 edition puts AI and cloud freshers at 7 to 8.5 lakh. We show the range rather than picking one. No source publishes mid-career bands for this title. | 7.0 to 8.5 lakh (AI and cloud freshers) | 43 lakh |
| Senior generative AI and MLOps | 58 to 60 lakh | |
| Chief AI Officer | 2 to 2.5 crore | |
| Cybersecurity Included for comparison against AI roles. | 28 to 33.5 lakh | |
| GenAI Developer (FY2026-27 edition) Read via YourStory. TeamLease's FY2026-27 tiers differ from the FY2025-26 rows above, so do not compare the two editions row against row. | 11.2 lakh (0 to 2 years) | 34.5 lakh (6 to 8 years) |
| Data Engineer (FY2026-27 edition) | 9.1 lakh (0 to 2 years) | 29.6 lakh (6 to 8 years) |
| Technical Support Engineer (FY2026-27 edition) TeamLease classes this as an AI-Support role, a useful floor against the AI-Core roles above. | 5.2 lakh (0 to 2 years) | 14.6 lakh (6 to 8 years) |
TeamLease Digital, 2025-08TeamLease Digital, 2024-08-27TeamLease Digital, 2026-09-29
Salary movement across the market
| India average salary increase, 2025 actual | 8.9% | |
| India average salary increase, 2026 projected | 9.1% | Projection |
| Technology consulting and services, 2026 projected | 6.6% | Projection |
| Technology platform and products, 2026 projected | 9.4% | Projection |
| Global Capability Centres, 2026 projected | 9.3% | Projection |
| Attrition, 2025 | 16.2% |
Aon, 2026-02-24 • Over 1,400 organisations across 45 industries.
Where we have no salary data
Prompt Engineer
No survey-grade salary source exists for India. The platform figure we found, from Indeed India, rests on 6 reported salaries (page updated 11 August 2026), and an earlier check found a sample of 11. Both are far too small to publish. The figures circulating on training-company blogs (typically 6 to 12 lakh entry, 20 lakh and above senior) trace back to marketing content with no stated methodology, so we do not repeat them. This is notable because Prompt Engineer is simultaneously the number 1 fastest-growing job title in India by LinkedIn's ranking.
AI Engineer, mid-career
Entry and senior figures exist from one source. No source publishes 2-year, 5-year or 10-year bands for this title.
Cloud Engineer, by experience band
The one mid-career figure we found came from a sample of 18 and implied an implausible jump over the early-career figure, so we have excluded it as a small-sample artefact.
Salary by city, for any AI role
No credible source publishes AI salary broken down by Indian city. Every city-by-city AI salary table we found was on a content-marketing blog with no methodology.
04 • Geography
Where the AI Jobs Are
Share of India's AI job postings
Based on more than 64,500 active AI-tagged listings on Naukri. The top three cities account for about 70% of all AI openings.
| Bengaluru | 25.4% | |
| Delhi NCR | 24.8% | |
| Mumbai | 19.2% | |
| Hyderabad | 12.5% | |
| Pune | 9.6% | |
| Chennai | 6.4% | |
| Kolkata | 2.1% |
Measured CBRE, 2026-02-19 • December 2025
Nagpur, Indore and Ahmedabad do not appear in this data. They fall below the source's reporting threshold, which means their share is small, not that it is zero.
Hiring growth by city
Year-on-year change in the Naukri JobSpeak index. All roles, not AI-specific.
| City | Feb 2026 | Mar 2026 | Apr 2026 | May 2026 | Jun 2026 | Jul 2026 | Aug 2026 | Sep 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hyderabad | +17% | +10% | +12% | +6% | +11% | +16% | +23% | +9% |
| Chennai | +9% | +11% | +6% | -0.2% | +10.3% | +11% | +20% | +6% |
| Bengaluru | +12% | +9% | +7% | +2% | +7% | +8% | +14% | +4% |
| Indore | +11% | +10% | +9% | +12% | +15% | +10% | +8% | +2% |
| Nagpur | +11% | +7% | +9% | -2% | +9% | +3% | +4% | +0.5% |
| Pune | +13% | +11% | +4% | -1% | +4% | +4% | +14% | +0.1% |
| Ahmedabad | +6% | +12% | +7% | +0.2% | +3.9% | +2% | +13% | -2% |
| Delhi NCR | +9% | +8% | +3% | -2% | +1% | -2% | +10% | -6% |
| Mumbai | +6% | +4% | -3% | -6% | 0% | -1% | +7% | -6% |
Info Edge / Naukri, 2026-10-06 • This is all-role hiring, not AI hiring. Naukri's August 2026 report gives AI/ML growth for seven metros, shown separately on the index. The figures swing widely from month to month, so read the direction over several months rather than any one cell.
AI/ML hiring growth by metro, August 2026
Year-on-year change in AI/ML hiring on Naukri. Naukri's August report is the only one we found that prints this split; its September report does not repeat it.
| Hyderabad | +48% | |
| Mumbai | +36% | |
| Bengaluru | +31% | |
| Chennai | +31% | |
| Pune | +31% | |
| Kolkata | +29% | |
| Delhi NCR | +25% |
Measured Naukri (Info Edge), 2026-09-07
Nagpur, Indore and Ahmedabad are not listed. One month of data, and August 2026 growth should be read with Info Edge's festive-calendar caution.
Global Capability Centre footprint
India has 2,117 GCCs across 3,728 units employing about 2.36 million professionals. More than 1,200 GCCs have AI or machine learning capability, and about 250,000 GCC professionals work in AI, roughly 28% of the global GCC AI talent pool.
| City | Units | Talent share |
|---|---|---|
| Bengaluru | 1,080+ | 34% |
| Hyderabad | 515+ | 14% |
| Delhi NCR | 490+ | 10% |
| Pune | 475+ | 13% |
| Chennai | 405+ | 12% |
| Mumbai | 375+ | 11% |
Zinnov and NASSCOM, 2026-07-02 • FY2026, data as of March 2026
Nagpur, Indore and Ahmedabad are not among the six cities that hold roughly 90% of India's GCC units.
The tier-2 shift is real, but smaller than the headlines suggest
- Emerging cities saw 42% growth in GCC job openings, against 19% in the metros Measured ANSR, 2026-05-26
- Tier-2 cities now account for about 15% of all GCC hiring, growing at roughly twice the metro rate Measured ANSR, 2026-05-26
- Attrition runs 8 to 12% in tier-2 cities against 18 to 22% in the metros Measured ANSR, 2026-05-26
A widely-copied claim that Nagpur and other non-metro cities recorded over 50% IT hiring growth in the first half of 2025 appears on an industry-body page with no source attribution, and is contradicted by the only measured data available: Naukri's index puts Nagpur between -2% and +11% across the months we checked. We do not repeat that claim.
Nagpur: what the data actually shows
There is no published AI or data-science hiring figure for Nagpur, from any source we could find. Rather than fill that gap with an estimate, here is what is verifiable.
IT and ITES companies with units operational in the MIHAN Special Economic Zone
Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, HCL Technologies, Tech Mahindra, Hexaware Technologies, GlobalLogic India, InfoCepts Technologies, ADCC Infocom, SmartData Enterprises, Altius Customer Services, Sagacious IP, Hazel Mercantile and GIF Technologies.
Measured Government of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Office of the Development Commissioner, undated • From the Government of India's official operational-units register, which lists each unit with its Letter of Approval number. Re-opened on 13 October 2026: it lists these thirteen units as IT/ITES. The page carries no publication date.
Hiring growth in Nagpur, year on year
+11% in February 2026, +7% in March, +9% in April, -2% in May, +9% in June, +3% in July, +4% in August and +0.5% in September. In July, August and September it was below the all-India white-collar figure of +5%, +14% and +2%.
Measured Info Edge / Naukri, 2026-10-06 • All roles, not AI-specific.
Maharashtra's GCC Policy 2025 names Nagpur as a target city
The policy targets 400 new GCCs and 4 lakh high-skilled jobs statewide, and explicitly names Nagpur, Nashik and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar as tier-2 cities it intends to bring into the global GCC landscape.
Projection Government of Maharashtra, 2025-11-03 • A stated policy objective, not a measured outcome.
What is not available
- No IT-sector-specific employment figure for Nagpur exists. The MIHAN employment figures of roughly 1.16 to 1.27 lakh are all-sector, covering aerospace, pharmaceuticals, logistics, food processing and power as well as IT, and include indirect employment. Attributing them to IT would be wrong.
- No AI or data-science hiring figure for Nagpur exists at any level.
- Software export figures cannot be separated out for Nagpur. The government's technology parks body reports only a jurisdiction total covering Pune, Nagpur, Nashik, Kolhapur, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and Mumbai together.
- Nagpur does not appear in any of the serious city rankings we reviewed: not in the GCC city breakdown, not in the AI-postings city list, and not in either study of emerging tech cities.
Local press has fact-checked the official MIHAN employment claims and found the widely-repeated figure of 90 operational companies to be inflated, with roughly 30 units functioning inside the SEZ. We reference this because an index that only reports flattering numbers about its own city is not an index.
05 • Tools
AI Tool Adoption
Development environments
Percentage of respondents who used each editor or environment regularly over the past year
| Visual Studio Code | 70.9% | |
| Visual Studio | 27.6% | |
| Cursor | 14.9% | |
| Windsurf | 3.2% |
Stack Overflow, 2026-10-06 • 13,193 respondents to the development environment question.
AI coding agents and assistants
Percentage of respondents who used each coding agent or assistant in the past year
| Claude Code | 65.5% | |
| GitHub Copilot | 58.7% | |
| OpenAI Codex | 29.5% | |
| Cursor | 25.5% | |
| Google Antigravity | 16.0% | |
| Windsurf | 6.5% |
Stack Overflow, 2026-10-06 • 12,255 respondents to the coding agents question.
Model vendors used for work
Percentage of respondents who used each LLM vendor for work in the past year
| Anthropic | 74.6% | |
| OpenAI | 74.3% | |
| Google AI | 54.5% | |
| Microsoft | 26.4% | |
| DeepSeek | 18.9% |
Stack Overflow, 2026-10-06 • 11,895 respondents to the LLM vendor question.
Agent orchestration frameworks
Percentage of respondents who used each framework in the past year
| LangChain | 30.2% | |
| OpenAI Agents SDK | 23.8% | |
| LangGraph | 18.8% | |
| Google ADK | 14.0% | |
| CrewAI | 5.5% |
Stack Overflow, 2026-10-06 • 4,400 respondents who answered the agent-orchestration question. A much narrower, self-selected group than the tables above.
No-code agent and app builders
Percentage of respondents who used each builder in the past year
| Lovable | 38.3% | |
| Replit | 28.3% | |
| v0 | 27.5% | |
| Bolt.new | 17.2% |
Stack Overflow, 2026-10-06 • 2,219 respondents who answered the no-code agent builder question. A narrow, self-selected group.
AI coding tools used at work, by professional developers
Percentage of professional developers using each tool at work, May to July 2026
| Claude Code | 39% | |
| GitHub Copilot | 21% | |
| Codex | 16% | |
| Cursor | 12% | |
| JetBrains AI | 9% | |
| OpenCode | 7% | |
| Google Antigravity | 6% |
Disclosure: JetBrains sells developer tools, including JetBrains AI, which appears in this table.
JetBrains, 2026-08-18 • More than 15,000 professional developers worldwide, quota-sampled by region and reweighted by JetBrains.
Company-announced scale
Figures announced by the companies themselves
| Gemini | More than 1 billion monthly users of the Gemini app Announced by Google on 11 August 2026. Monthly users of the Gemini app, not of Google's other AI products. | |
| OpenAI models | More than 1 billion active users and more than 2 million businesses From an OpenAI post dated 31 July 2026. It does not say whether the figure is weekly or monthly, or which products it covers. | |
| ChatGPT | 900 million weekly active users Announced February 2026. The last weekly figure OpenAI gave for ChatGPT. | |
Independent consumer ranking
By web visits and mobile monthly actives, August 2026 data
| ChatGPT | Number 1. About twice Gemini's August web visits and 6 times Claude's. On mobile, about 2.5 times Gemini's monthly actives and 14 times Claude's. | |
| Gemini | Number 2 of the three leading assistants, behind ChatGPT on both web and mobile | |
| Claude | Number 3 of the three, and ahead of DeepSeek and Perplexity in traffic. No user figure disclosed. | |
Disclosure: The publisher of this ranking is an active investor in the sector.
Andreessen Horowitz, 2026-10-05 • Web from Similarweb monthly visits, mobile from Sensor Tower monthly actives.
Individual datapoints
| Google Antigravity, India | Used at work by 15% of developers in India, up from 10% in January 2026, practically tied with Cursor as the third most-popular AI coding tool there | The one India-specific tool figure we found. JetBrains does not publish the size of its India sub-sample, so treat it as indicative. Globally Antigravity is at 6%. | JetBrains, 2026-08-18 |
| Windsurf | 82 million US dollars annual recurring revenue, 350-plus enterprise customers | Self-reported by the acquiring company in July 2025. Over a year old and predates the product's trajectory since acquisition. | Cognition, 2025-07-14 |
| Lovable | Raised 330 million US dollars at a 6.6 billion valuation | Verified funding news. Valuation measures investor conviction, not how many people use the product. Lovable publishes no user numbers; its survey usage is in the no-code builders table above. | TechCrunch, 2025-12-18 |
Tools with no usable data
Claude, consumer monthly actives
Anthropic does not publish a consumer user total. a16z's August 2026 data gives only relative multiples against ChatGPT, not absolute counts. A figure circulating on statistics-aggregator sites could not be verified against its claimed source.
Perplexity, user counts and query volumes
Every figure in circulation traces only to statistics-aggregator sites with no primary source. Neither of the 2026 developer surveys we use reports it, and a16z shows only that Claude has overtaken it in traffic.
Any composite popularity score
No source publishes one, and the inputs cannot be responsibly weighted. We did not construct one.
06 • Forecast
What Others Project
- 2026
About 382,000 AI-linked roles posted in India, a 32% increase
From 290,256 in calendar 2025
Projection foundit (formerly Monster APAC & ME), 2026-01-13 • Arithmetically consistent with the same source's measured 2025 base. Read via secondary coverage.
- 2026
Demand for GenAI talent crosses 10 lakh roles
Projection TeamLease Digital, 2026-09-29 • Reported secondhand via YourStory on 29 September 2026. We could not open the report and the coverage does not state a method. The target year is the current one, so it will soon be checkable.
- 2027
India's AI talent pool exceeds 1.25 million people
Up from 600,000 to 650,000 in 2022
Projection Deloitte India and NASSCOM, 2024-08-20 • The best-sourced India AI talent projection available, taken from the primary release. Published August 2024, so its window is now close to current, which makes it checkable rather than speculative.
- 2030
About 39% of workers' core skills are transformed or outdated
Projection World Economic Forum, 2025-01
- 2030
170 million jobs created and 92 million displaced, a net gain of 78 million
Projection World Economic Forum, 2025-01 • Global, not India. We could not verify the India-specific figures from this report because the publisher's site blocked automated access, so we do not quote them.
- 2030
AI and big data is the number 1 fastest-growing skill worldwide
Projection World Economic Forum, 2025-01 • Covers the period 2025 to 2030.
- 2030
Maharashtra targets 400 new Global Capability Centres and 4 lakh high-skilled jobs, explicitly naming Nagpur as a target city
Projection Government of Maharashtra, 2025-11-03 • A stated government objective, not a forecast derived from data. Included because it is the only Nagpur-relevant forward-looking item with an official source.
Projections we chose not to repeat
- India will cross one million AI job openings by 2026. We could not trace this broad version to any dated primary source, and it conflicts with the better-sourced 1.25 million by 2027 figure above. A narrower claim, that demand for GenAI talent crosses 10 lakh roles by 2026, is now attributed to TeamLease Digital and listed above as a projection.
- A 51% AI demand-supply gap. Traces to a 2022 baseline, and the primary report it is attributed to states no gap percentage at all.
- Demand for AI and big data specialists to grow over 60% in India. Plausible and widely repeated, but the publisher's site blocked access and we could not confirm the figure appears in the report.
07 • Methodology
What We Could Not Measure
Most published AI statistics pages show only what they found. This is what we looked for and could not source. It is here because a number's absence is information too, and because it is the part a journalist or a rival institute would check first.
Prompt Engineer salary in India
No survey-grade source exists. The platform figure we found, from Indeed India, rests on 6 reported salaries, and an earlier check found 11. Both are too small to publish. Figures circulating on training-company blogs have no stated methodology.
Power BI skill demand
No authoritative, dated, methodologically transparent source measures it. Live job-board listing counts are snapshots that include duplicates, not a demand index.
Deep Learning as a distinct skill
Not tracked separately by any major source. It is absorbed into wider AI and machine learning categories.
MCP adoption rate
The count of published servers is citable. Every percentage adoption claim we found traced only to statistics-aggregator sites that contradicted each other, and Stack Overflow's 2026 AI tables do not ask about it.
India-specific figures for Python, SQL, Docker, AWS and Azure
Stack Overflow's 2026 technology tables break results down by years of experience, not by country. We show its global figures and label them global.
A current measured AI demand-supply gap for India
The widely-quoted gap traces to a 2022 baseline. The primary 2024 report states no gap percentage at all. TeamLease Digital has since published its own estimates, reported secondhand without a stated method, so we cite that they exist but not the numbers as data.
AI hiring data for Nagpur, Indore and Ahmedabad
The city-level AI data we could source covers seven metros and does not disaggregate these cities. Naukri prints all-role hiring growth for them, which we show, but not AI-specific growth.
Healthcare and retail AI demand in India
The occupation and sector cuts we could source cover IT, BFSI, manufacturing, insurance and engineering only.
Widely-repeated claims we deliberately excluded
Each of these circulates freely. None survived a check against its supposed source.
- AI Engineer +143% year on year, applied to India. That is LinkedIn's United States figure. India per-title growth is not published.
- A 51% AI demand-supply gap. Traces to a 2022 baseline, and the primary report states no gap percentage.
- Only 16% of Indian IT professionals are AI-skilled. It now appears in press coverage (29 September 2026) of TeamLease Digital's FY2026-27 primer, but we could not open the report and the coverage states no population or method, so we still do not publish it as a measured national figure.
- India will cross one million AI job openings by 2026. The broad version is untraceable and conflicts with the better-sourced 2027 projection. A narrower GenAI-only version is now attributed to TeamLease Digital and listed as a projection.
- Any composite popularity score for AI tools. No source publishes one, and the inputs are in incompatible units.
08 • Sources
Every Source, In Full
38 sources. Each figure on this page links back to one of them.
| Source | Date | Scope | Measured on | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ANSR Emerging Cities: India's Next Frontier for GCC Expansion 2026 | 2026-05-26 | india | GCC job openings and hiring across 14 emerging Indian cities. | Open |
| Andreessen Horowitz The Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps, 7th Edition | 2026-10-05 | global | Web ranking from Similarweb monthly visits and mobile ranking from Sensor Tower monthly active users, August 2026 data. The edition also adds a ranking from YipitData US consumer card spending. | Open |
| Aon Aon Survey Projects Slight Uptick in Salaries in India From 8.9 Percent in 2025 to 9.1 Percent in 2026 | 2026-02-24 | india | Over 1,400 organisations across 45 industries. | Open |
| CBRE AI job demand research, based on Naukri.com listings | 2026-02-19 | india | Over 64,500 active AI-tagged listings on Naukri.com as of December 2025. A point-in-time snapshot of open listings, not a full-year flow. | Open |
| Cognition Cognition's acquisition of Windsurf | 2025-07-14 | global | Announced at acquisition. | Open |
| Coursera Job Skills Report 2026 | 2026-01-21 | global | About 6 million professionally-motivated enterprise learners across 7,000+ institutional customers. Learners whose employer bought Coursera, not the general workforce. | Open |
| Deloitte India and NASSCOM Advancing India's AI Skills | 2024-08-20 | india | India AI talent pool estimates and projection to 2027. | Open |
| GitHub Octoverse 2025 | 2025-10-28 | global | Public and open-source activity on GitHub, 1 Sep 2024 to 31 Aug 2025. | Open |
| Google More than 1 billion people are using the Gemini app every month | 2026-08-11 | global | Company-announced figure for the Gemini app. Not independently audited. | Open |
| Government of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Office of the Development Commissioner MIHAN SEZ operational units register | undated | nagpur | Official register of operational units in the MIHAN Special Economic Zone, each listed with its Letter of Approval number and commencement date. | Open |
| Government of Maharashtra Maharashtra GCC Policy 2025 | 2025-11-03 | maharashtra | State policy targets. These are stated objectives, not measured outcomes. | Open |
| Indeed AI mentions in Indian job titles, March 2026 quarter, as reported by CXOToday | 2026-08-26 | india | Indeed's normalised job titles in India. The article names Indeed and its APAC economist but does not link Indeed's own post. | Open |
| Indeed Hiring Lab September 2025 IN Labour Market Update: Continued Growth in AI | 2025-10-25 | india | Job postings on Indeed India. | Open |
| Indeed India Career salary pages, India | 2026-10 | india | Self-reported salaries on Indeed India career pages. Each page states its own sample size and an update date between 1 and 5 October 2026 for the roles shown. Samples differ between visits, so a change in an average partly reflects a different sample. | Open |
| Indeed and NASSCOM India's AI Talent Inflection Point: From Skill Gaps to Competitive Advantage | 2026-05-22 | india | Job postings on Indeed India plus an employer and employee survey. The NASSCOM-hosted page was not machine-readable; figures come from CIO&Leader's reporting. | Open |
| Info Edge / Naukri JobSpeak monthly reports, city annexures (February to September 2026) | 2026-10-06 | india | Job listings posted on Naukri.com, by city. | Open |
| JetBrains Developer Ecosystem Survey 2026: AI coding agent adoption trends | 2026-08-18 | global | More than 15,000 professional developers worldwide, fielded May to July 2026, with regional quotas and statistical reweighting. Roughly 90% of the sample are in the Developer / Programmer / Software Engineer category. | Open |
| LinkedIn Skills on the Rise 2026 (India) | 2026-02-24 | india | LinkedIn member skill-acquisition and hiring data in India. Published as a rank order only, with no growth percentages or denominators. | Open |
| LinkedIn India recruiter and job-seeker research | 2026-02 | india | LinkedIn survey of Indian recruiters and job seekers. | Open |
| LinkedIn News India Jobs on the Rise 2026: 25 fastest-growing jobs in India | 2026-01-08 | india | Analyses job starts by LinkedIn members in India, 1 Jan 2023 to 31 Jul 2025. Ranks growth rate, not volume. No per-title growth percentage is published for India. | Open |
| LinkedIn News India Jobs on the Rise 2025: 25 fastest-growing roles in India | 2025-01-15 | india | Analyses job starts by LinkedIn members in India, 1 Jan 2022 to 31 Jul 2024. Same methodology as the 2026 edition, one year earlier. | Open |
| Linux Foundation Linux Foundation Announces the Formation of the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) | 2025-12-09 | global | Foundation claim. Anthropic is a platinum member. | Open |
| NASSCOM Technology Sector in India: Strategic Review 2026, as reported by Reuters | 2026-02-24 | india | NASSCOM's estimate of India technology sector revenue and headcount for FY2026, published 24 February 2026 before the fiscal year closed. | Open |
| Nagpur Today Fact check: MIHAN in numbers, do 90 companies really employ 1.27 lakh people in Nagpur? | 2026-03-05 | nagpur | Examines official MIHAN employment statements against unit-level reality. | Open |
| Naukri (Info Edge) JobSpeak Index, monthly reports June to September 2026 | 2026-10-06 | india | New job postings (including free job listings) and recruiter searches on Naukri.com. Covers the formal white-collar segment that recruits via Naukri, not the whole Indian labour market. Each month's figure comes from that month's report; the latest is September 2026, published 6 October 2026. | Open |
| Naukri (Info Edge) JobSpeak August 2026: AI/ML hiring by metro | 2026-09-07 | india | New job postings on Naukri.com. The report dated 7 September 2026 gives AI/ML hiring growth for seven metros; the September report does not repeat that split. | Open |
| OpenAI ChatGPT weekly active users announcement | 2026-02-27 | global | Company-announced figure. Not independently audited. | Open |
| OpenAI Building abundant intelligence | 2026-07-31 | global | Company-announced figure. The post says OpenAI's models reach more than one billion active users and more than two million businesses, and does not say whether that is weekly or monthly or which products it covers. | Open |
| PayScale Salary research by job title, India | 2026-07 | india | Self-reported total compensation submitted by employees. Sample size varies by role and is stated per figure. | Open |
| Stack Overflow 2026 Developer Survey | 2026-10-06 | global | 30,903 valid responses from 169 countries, collected 23 June to 5 August 2026 from people reached through Stack Overflow's site, blog and opted-in email list. Self-selected, not a random sample. Every question has its own respondent count, and each figure here carries it. | Open |
| Stanford HAI AI Index Report 2026 | 2026-04-13 | india | AI skill-penetration metrics derived from LinkedIn member profiles, by country. | Open |
| TeamLease Digital Digital Skills & Salary Primer FY2025-26 | 2025-08 | india | Over 30,000 salaries analysed. | Open |
| TeamLease Digital Digital Skills & Salary Primer FY2024-25 (via PTI / ThePrint) | 2024-08-27 | india | Reached us through wire coverage rather than the primary PDF. | Open |
| TeamLease Digital Digital Skills & Salary Primer FY2026-27, as reported by YourStory | 2026-09-29 | india | The coverage does not state the sample or method. | Open |
| TechCrunch Vibe-coding startup Lovable raises $330M at a $6.6B valuation | 2025-12-18 | global | Funding round. Valuation is not an adoption measure. | Open |
| World Economic Forum The Future of Jobs Report 2025 | 2025-01 | global | Over 1,000 employers representing more than 14 million workers, across 22 industry clusters and 55 economies. | Open |
| Zinnov and NASSCOM GCC Landscape in India 2026 (The GCC Value Orbit) | 2026-07-02 | india | Global Capability Centres in India, data as of March 2026 (FY2026). City breakdown from Zinnov's companion article, 15 June 2026. | Open |
| foundit (formerly Monster APAC & ME) foundit Insights Tracker, Annual Hiring Trends India 2025 | 2026-01-13 | india | AI-linked roles posted in India during calendar year 2025. A full-year flow of postings. | Open |
09 • Fireblaze Insights
Written Up, With the Same Sources
The data on this page also drives full articles on our blog, built from the same citations and the same rule: what we could not verify gets published as a gap, not a guess.
The AI Job Market in India in 2026: What the Data Actually Shows
The headline findings from this page, written up with the same sources and the same honesty about what we could not verify.
Read the article →Prompt Engineer Is India's Fastest-Growing Job Title, and Nobody Can Price It Yet
Why the number one fastest-growing job title on LinkedIn's 2026 India list still has no usable salary data, and what that gap actually tells you.
Read the article →How to Become an AI Engineer in India: Complete Roadmap 2026
The skill path behind the highest-ranked AI role that does have real, measured salary data.
Read the article →Cite & embed
Use This Index
Quote it, embed its charts or download the data, free, with attribution. Our compilation is CC BY 4.0. The underlying figures belong to the sources named beside each one.
Cite as
Fireblaze AI School. (2026). AI Skill Index of India, October 2026 edition [Data set]. https://fireblazeaischool.in/ai-skill-index/. Data reviewed 13 October 2026.
FAQ
Questions About This Index
Which AI skills are most in demand in India?
LinkedIn ranks querying as the fastest-growing engineering skill in India for 2026, followed by LLMOps at number 4 and workflow automation at number 5. AI/ML roles rose 20% year on year on Naukri in September 2026, the largest increase among the sectors and segments in Naukri's headline chart. India leads the world on relative AI skill penetration, where AI skills appear on member profiles at three times the global average, according to the Stanford AI Index 2026.
What is the salary for a data scientist in India?
PayScale reports average total compensation of about 5.95 lakh under one year of experience, 10.05 lakh at 1 to 4 years, 18.38 lakh at 5 to 9 years and 25.08 lakh at 10 to 19 years, from a sample of 1,267 self-reported salaries. Indeed separately reports an average base salary of about 12.28 lakh across all experience levels. These measure different things, total compensation versus base salary, which is why they differ.
Which Indian cities have the most AI jobs?
Based on more than 64,500 active AI-tagged listings on Naukri in December 2025, Bengaluru held 25.4% of India's AI job postings, Delhi NCR 24.8% and Mumbai 19.2%, together about 70% of all AI openings. Hyderabad held 12.5%, Pune 9.6%, Chennai 6.4% and Kolkata 2.1%.
How many AI jobs are there in Nagpur?
No published source reports AI or data-science hiring figures for Nagpur, and we do not estimate one. What is verifiable: TCS, Infosys, HCL Technologies, Tech Mahindra, Hexaware, GlobalLogic and InfoCepts have units operational in the MIHAN Special Economic Zone per the Government of India register, and Nagpur's overall hiring growth ran between -2% and +11% year on year across the months we checked, and was below the all-India white-collar figure in each of July, August and September 2026.
Does the AI Skill Index publish a single score?
No. The underlying figures are survey percentages, job-posting indices, platform profile data and company announcements, drawn from different populations at different dates. There is no principled way to weight them into one number, so we publish each source separately with its own date and sample, and list what we could not measure.
Career guidance
Work out what this means for you
Numbers describe a market. They do not tell you which program fits your degree, your city or your budget. That is a conversation, and ours is free with no obligation to enrol.
- An honest read on which roles suit your background
- What the pay data above realistically means for a fresher in Nagpur
- Which of our three programs fits, or whether none of them does
Corrections welcome
If a figure here is wrong, out of date, or you hold better data, tell us and we will fix it and say that we did.