AI skill demand in India’s CDMO sector jumps 178%: Report

India’s CDMO sector is rapidly shifting towards AI-enabled hiring, with demand for AI-linked skills rising 178 per cent in two years, according to a CIEL HR report. Experts warn of a widening talent gap as pharmaceutical manufacturing embraces automation and advanced analytics.

New Delhi: India’s contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) sector is seeing a rapid realignment of hiring toward AI‑enabled capabilities, with AI‑linked skill demand up 178 per cent over the past two years, a report said on Thursday.

The report from HR solutions provider CIEL HR said the overall sectoral hiring rose 52 per cent from 2023 to 2025, while AI‑linked demand climbed from 6.2 per cent to 17.2 per cent in 2025.

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The technology and digital roles showed the highest AI demand at nearly 38 per cent. Demand for AI-led skills is expanding beyond traditional technology roles into core functions such as research and development, quality and analytics.

Overall hiring saw the momentum shifting from manufacturing to capability-intensive roles amid sustained capacity expansion and rising complexity in outsourced pharmaceutical programs.

The report said that manufacturing and operations remained the largest single segment with 1,820 roles in 2025. However, these functions showed the slowest growth among role families at about 8 per cent year‑on‑year.

Hiring momentum is increasingly shifting away from labour intensity toward automation, planning accuracy and quality predictability.

The report flagged a widening execution gap between demand and available talent, particularly in high-value scientific roles.

While demand for AI skills in research and development roles has gone up to 24 per cent, the current supply of AI-skilled talent in these functions remains below 1 per cent, creating a significant execution constraint.

“The CDMO sector is entering a phase where competitive advantage will be the ability to integrate intelligence into every layer of operations. AI is becoming central to how research is accelerated, manufacturing is optimised and client commitments are delivered,” said Aditya Narayana Mishra, MD and CEO, CIEL HR.

The report noted that out of nearly 1,44,000 manufacturing professionals, only about 0.8 per cent are AI‑skilled. In commercial roles with nearly 1,19,000 professionals, nearly 0.1 per cent have AI capability. Data and analytics roles showed roughly 15 per cent AI skill penetration.