As 2025 draws to a close, the business sector stands at a pivotal crossroads marked by resilience, reinvention, and recalibration. From the surge of digital transformation and AI-driven efficiencies to the shifting tides in global trade and consumer behavior, this year has been defined by both challenges and breakthroughs. Companies across industries have navigated inflationary pressures, regulatory shifts, and evolving workforce dynamics, while simultaneously unlocking new opportunities in sustainability, retail innovation, and financial technology. The year-end narrative is not just about numbers on balance sheets, but about how businesses have adapted, reimagined, and positioned themselves for the future.
Deep Vadodaria, Managing Director, Nila Spaces Limited commented for the real estate sector, 2025 has been a year of taking stock for the real estate sector. While several categories have continued to perform exceptionally well, others have been forced into a reality check especially with the oversupply and swelling luxury inventory.
The key learnings from 2025 are clear:
• Brand premiums are becoming a defining force in India, with larger developers commanding significant pricing power.
• New categories such as wellness real estate have moved from concept to mainstream adoption.
• Developers are finally becoming sustainable in a meaningful sense not as a marketing line, but as a design and construction philosophy.
• Competition has intensified, even as global and institutional investments that were flowing freely until 2022–23 have now slowed, with the ecosystem sitting on surplus liquidity.
With markets at lifetime highs, sentiment has naturally shifted towards more conservative investment postures, but this is largely cyclical. I expect 2026 to see a renewed surge of capital into real estate, especially as the sector becomes increasingly user-driven, a true buyer’s market with abundant product availability.
We’re finally reaching a stage where a genuine buyer–seller equilibrium is emerging across several micromarkets. India’s broader economic momentum and rising purchasing power will continue to support this shift. And, importantly, Indian consumers are mentally unlocking a new sense of affordability, not risky, but more open, decisive, and aspirational.
Quality of life has become the decisive factor. Upgrading lifestyles is now one of the strongest consumption drivers, and this trend will only accelerate through the next decade.
2026 looks set to be a year of opportunity:
- New avenues and segments emerging
- More innovation in sustainable design
- Cities and developers increasingly working together on infrastructure and urban support systems
This alignment: consumer aspiration, developer maturity, and urban collaboration is what will define the next chapter of Indian real estate.
From agriculture sector Abhishek Wadekar, Founder Chairman – Tradelink International Private Limited stated that, we at Tradelink International remain committed to strengthening India’s fertilizer and agri-input supply chains – from participating in national discussions on potash and phosphatic imports to supporting smoother transitions under GST 2.0. We believe collaboration, transparency and long-term partnerships are key to ensuring farmer welfare and industry resilience.
In 2025, we actively engaged with policymakers and industry leaders. We worked towards stabilising nutrient supply for India’s growing needs. And we remain focused on building a future-ready, reliable commodity ecosystem.
Jaivinder Singh Gill, Regional Vice President and Managing Director – Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa at Diebold Nixdorf said, “2025 was a year of resilience and transformation for Diebold Nixdorf, as we strengthened our global partnerships, advanced innovations in banking and retail technology, and delivered value to clients navigating rapid industry change. Looking ahead to 2026, we remain focused on driving operational excellence, deepening customer trust, and shaping the future of connected commerce with solutions that empower businesses worldwide.”
Rohan Manthani, Co-Founder, Streamoid said that “2025 was the year fashion and retail moved from AI curiosity to operational adoption. As margins tightened and trend cycles accelerated, brands realised that isolated tools were no longer enough.
The real shift was toward connected, decision-first systems that bring design, planning, cataloging, and commerce onto a single intelligence layer. AI emerged as a growth driver not by automating creativity, but by removing friction from how teams work. Brands used AI to shorten go-to-market timelines, improve demand planning, reduce manual catalog work, and make earlier, more confident decisions. These gains also translated into sustainability wins, from lower overproduction to fewer returns driven by better product data and visuals.
In 2026, the focus will move decisively toward agentic platforms embedded into daily workflows.”
Founder of Hunar.AI Krishna Khandelwal said “2025 has been a breakout year for AI-native frontline workforce management. For the first time, we saw the commercialisation of truly autonomous AI HRs—not as pilots or prototypes, but as real systems managing hiring, onboarding and retention at scale. Our multilingual Voice AI HRs reached full maturity this year, becoming truly conversational and capable of handling end-to-end recruitment across multiple Indic languages with human-level empathy and superior consistency.
This year marked a clear inflection point in both cost and quality of Voice AI. AI Recruiters are no longer an experiment—they are now matching, and in many cases exceeding, human efficacy in frontline hiring. At Hunar, our AI HRs powered 10 million+ conversations, 30 million+ minutes of engagement, and helped drive the hiring of tens of thousands of frontline workers across BFSI, Quick-Commerce, Logistics, Healthcare Diagnostics, Retail and QSR.
2026 will accelerate this shift from automation to autonomy. We expect AI HRs to extend deeply into frontline retention, enabling organisations to intervene early and reduce churn. Video-AI-driven role-play learning and L&D will reshape how frontline teams are trained. Recruiter productivity will rise 5X, and recruitment & staffing agencies will adopt Voice AI at scale, unlocking dramatic gains in margins and hiring velocity.”
Gokul Krishna, co-founder, SmartTerra commented that, “2025 marked a structural turning point for the global water sector, as utilities moved beyond pilot-led digitalisation to large-scale adoption of intelligence-driven operations. Intensifying water stress, climate variability, rapid urbanisation and rising expectations of service accountability pushed utilities to focus sharply on efficiency, resilience and financial sustainability. Reducing non-revenue water, optimising asset performance and improving operational visibility emerged as critical industry priorities, driving sustained demand for advanced analytics and decision-support platforms.
The year also underscored a clear shift from data collection to data utilisation. Utilities increasingly leveraged artificial intelligence to unify siloed datasets across billing, network operations and field activities. AI-enabled models helped surface hidden leakages, consumption anomalies and systemic inefficiencies that are otherwise invisible in complex distribution networks. Beyond operational improvements, technology played a vital role in aligning performance outcomes with sustainability goals by reducing water losses, energy consumption and avoidable capital expenditure.
Looking ahead to 2026, the sector will accelerate its transition towards predictive, AI-driven water systems, where intelligence is embedded across planning, operations and investment decisions, enabling cities to build resilient, financially sustainable and climate-ready water infrastructure.”
