How our numbers are made.
A CFO who cannot see how a number was derived should discard it.
This page sets out how every figure this site produces is arrived at, and where every figure it quotes comes from.
The AI Waste Calculator
Eight questions, answered in bands. Each band is turned into a single working value, the values go through five sums, and the same sums are printed beside every result.
Identified spend, 24 months
Licences a year × 2, plus initiatives started × the sector's unit cost, plus external consulting, plus people × ₹24 lakh loaded annual cost × 2.
Production rate
Initiatives still running in production ÷ initiatives started. It cannot exceed one.
Stalled spend
(1 − production rate) × (initiative cost + external consulting). The money behind work that never reached production.
Shelfware
A share of licence spend: 10% if every initiative has a documented business case and a measured result, 25% if some do, 40% if none do.
Estimated unrealised
Stalled spend + shelfware.
Unit costs and benchmarks, by sector
| Sector | One initiative | Reach production |
|---|---|---|
| BFSI | ₹18 lakh | 25% |
| Manufacturing | ₹14 lakh | 18% |
| Healthcare | ₹15 lakh | 20% |
| Logistics | ₹13 lakh | 22% |
| Professional services | ₹10 lakh | 15% |
| GCC | ₹16 lakh | 30% |
| Other | ₹12 lakh | 20% |
Unit costs and sector benchmarks are 72 Networks field estimates from 2025-26 engagements. A person working on AI is costed at ₹24 lakh a year, fully loaded.
What each band is counted as
Licences, a year
Under ₹10 lakh counts as ₹5 lakh; ₹10-40 lakh counts as ₹25 lakh; ₹40 lakh to ₹1 crore counts as ₹70 lakh; Above ₹1 crore counts as ₹2 crore.
Initiatives started
1-3 counts as 2; 4-8 counts as 6; 9-15 counts as 12; More than 15 counts as 20.
External consulting
Under ₹25 lakh counts as ₹12 lakh; ₹25 lakh to ₹1 crore counts as ₹62 lakh; ₹1-3 crore counts as ₹2 crore; Above ₹3 crore counts as ₹4.5 crore.
People on AI
0-2 counts as 1; 3-5 counts as 4; 6-10 counts as 8; More than 10 counts as 14.
A worked example, run through the calculator's own code
A manufacturer spending ₹10-40 lakh a year on licences, with 4-8 initiatives started and one in production, ₹25 lakh to ₹1 crore of external consulting, 3-5 people on AI, and business cases documented for some initiatives.
- ₹3.9 crore
- Identified spend
- 17%
- Production rate
- ₹1.2 crore
- Stalled spend
- ₹1.3 crore
- Estimated unrealised
The DPDP and AI Governance Readiness Check
18 questions across 5 domains. Each answer scores two for yes, one for partially and nothing for no. The score is the points earned as a share of the points available, overall and by domain.
The domains
| Domain | Questions |
|---|---|
| System inventory | 3 |
| Consent architecture | 4 |
| Data flows and residency | 4 |
| Model risk and oversight | 4 |
| Vendor and contractual position | 3 |
How the score is read
Every question answered below yes adds the obligation behind it to your list: marked “cannot meet” for no, and “at risk” for partially.
Figures we quote
| Figure | What it says | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 56% | of companies report no significant financial benefit from their AI investments. | BCG, AI Radar, 2024 |
| 42% | of enterprises abandoned most of their AI initiatives during 2025. | S&P Global Market Intelligence, 2025 |
| 27% | of the average Indian mid-market AI budget is lost to complexity overhead. | Our own estimate |
| ₹33,000 cr | written off against stalled or abandoned AI programmes in India, every year. | Our own estimate |
Two of these are other people's research and are credited to them. Two are our own estimates, and are labelled as estimates wherever they appear. Their working has not yet been published here; until it is, treat them as what they are called.
What an estimate is not
The calculator and the readiness check produce indicative estimates from your own answers and published unit costs. They are not audits, assessments or legal opinions. The Reality Check replaces every assumption on this page with your actual invoices, contracts and timesheets.
Run the number yourself.
Eight questions, about ninety seconds. The result is ungated, and the arithmetic is printed on the page.