AI investment India: A new Avalara report says many finance leaders in India are feeling heavy pressure to show that AI is worth the money. The study found that 85% of Indian finance leaders are under moderate to significant pressure to prove returns on AI investment. It also said 71% of respondents feel the push is mostly about moving fast, while only 8% say their company puts governance ahead of speed.
The survey was done by Censuswide among 250 CFOs and senior finance leaders in Indian companies with yearly revenue of about US$10 million or more.
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Controls and Accountability are Falling Behind
The report says the fast AI push is creating a gap in control and oversight. In India, 27% of respondents said it is unclear who is responsible for major AI agent mistakes, or that no one is. That is higher than in the other markets covered in the study. Around 10% of Indian finance leaders said they are not confident they could clearly explain an AI agent’s actions to a regulator or auditor.
Another 24% said their internal controls have not been updated in the past year to match AI agents that take or suggest actions. The report also found that only 28% said AI controls had been checked or tested by IT or cybersecurity teams, while 34% said risk or compliance teams had reviewed them.
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The report also showed that many finance teams do not yet have enough in-house knowledge to fully understand how these AI agents work. It said 76% lack dedicated internal expertise for this. At the same time, Indian finance leaders said they would feel more confident if AI outputs were based on verified tax and financial data, if humans checked high-risk actions, if there were audit trails for every AI action, and if vendors took more responsibility for accuracy.
Avalara said this is a warning sign for companies using AI in tax, compliance and regulatory work, because automated decisions need to stay transparent and ready for audit. The company’s India head, Dulles Krishnan, said, “While Indian enterprises are moving fast to automate, their internal rulebooks are being left behind,” and added, “Running new AI tools on outdated compliance policies is a massive blind spot. CFOs in this market need to ensure their risk frameworks are actually updated to monitor automated decisions before an auditor comes knocking.”
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The study, titled Agents of Change: How the Race to Deploy AI Agents is Outrunning Financial Governance, was based on finance leaders in India who had already deployed, tested, or seriously looked at AI agents in the past 12 months. It was carried out between June 15 and June 22, 2026. Avalara said the main message is simple: companies are moving fast on AI, but governance, records and accountability need to catch up before the risks get bigger.
