From automated farm tractors to exam paper grading, AI boosts efficiency for some in India

KARNAL, India — Farmer Bir Virk tapped the iPad mounted beside his tractor's steering wheel and switched the vehicle to automatic mode. The machine moved forward and began harvesting potatoes on its own in the fields of Karnal, a city in northern India.

Some 145 kilometers (90 miles) away in the country's capital of New Delhi, educator Swetank Pandey employed similar automation at his coaching academy. He used algorithms to scan and grade handwritten exam papers from candidates for India's competitive civil services.

In both cases, the same invisible hand was at work: artificial intelligence.

From farms to classrooms, AI is fast emerging as a tool for many Indians to boost efficiency and cut time, costs and labor. Early adopters, like Virk and Pandey, say the technology is helping them boost productivity as they test AI's potential to find solutions at work.

''I am able to farm very efficiently and I feel very happy that I do the work what my grandfather and father used to do. Now I am carrying the tradition forward with the right technology,'' said Virk.

India is testing its AI scale

As AI use surges across the globe, the technology is steadily gaining ground across India as businesses, startups and individuals experiment with new ways to improve efficiency.

With nearly a billion internet users, India has also become a key focus for global tech companies to scale their AI businesses in one of the world's fastest-growing digital markets.

Last December, Microsoft announced a $17.5 billion investment over four years to expand cloud and AI infrastructure in India. It followed Google's $15 billion investment over five years, including plans for its first AI hub in the country.

''There's some good use cases that have started. There are these scaling platforms that are now embedding AI into them,'' said Sangeeta Gupta, senior vice president at NASSCOM, a prominent body representing India's technology industry.

India's adoption to AI, however, has its constraints.

The country still lags in developing its own large-scale AI model like U.S.-based OpenAI or China's DeepSeek, highlighting challenges such as limited access to advanced semiconductor chips, data centers and hundreds of local languages to learn from.

At the same time, however, people like Virk and Pandey say AI tools are already making their work faster and more efficient.

Precision agriculture through AI

Virk, the farmer, first encountered AI-driven farming technology five years ago while studying and working in the United States. When he returned to India in 2021, he imported the system from a Swedish company and has been using it on his farm for the past couple of years.

His automated tractor can plant seeds, spray fertilizer and harvest crops. The system costs about $3,864 and combines a steering motor, satellite signals that help move the tractor precisely, and an AI-driven software that converts data into movement.

It also logs errors and uploads them to a cloud platform, where the software company analyzes the data and sends related updates back to the machine.

He said his AI-enabled tractor has reduced his work time by half.

''Its most special feature is that it is self-learning,'' he said.

AI enters India's famed exam factories

Educator Pandey teaches at a civil services coaching center, a sector known for its fierce competition. Millions of young Indians compete for civil service jobs each year, and coaching centers process vast numbers of tests, evaluations and revisions.

Pandey said AI has made that workload easier to manage.

Pandey said the technology helps him carry out repetitive tasks, allowing tens of thousands of answer sheets to be evaluated in as little as 20 to 25 minutes.

''If you have a better machine, bigger system, you can do it in two minutes,'' he said.

For now, his coaching academy uses a hybrid model. AI helps with evaluations and teachers review the output, improving both speed and quality.

Pandey said AI often produces study material that students find more relatable than those devised by teachers.

''AI is able to give us in advance a basic idea what the student is doing right now and what next he or she should do to be able to achieve their goals,'' he said.