New data reveals India has become the second-largest market for Claude, with 50% of users leveraging advanced tool use capabilities for technical development, signaling a major shift in the IT workforce.
The global artificial intelligence landscape is witnessing a significant structural shift, centered not in Silicon Valley, but in the bustling technology hubs of Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Following the recent introduction of advanced tool use capabilities within the Claude Developer Platform by Anthropic, data indicates a rapid evolution in how Indian technology companies are deploying generative AI. Moving beyond simple conversational queries, Indian developers are aggressively adopting these features to transform AI models into active workflow agents, positioning the nation's massive IT workforce to transition from manual coders to strategic "pro-developers."
This development comes as Anthropic confirms that India has emerged as its second-largest consumer market globally for the Claude chatbot. According to recent reports, the adoption patterns in India are distinctively technical. While global usage often leans toward creative writing or general assistance, approximately 50 percent of Claude users in India employ the software specifically for technical purposes such as UI design, software development, and code debugging. This is significantly higher than the 30 percent average observed in the rest of the world, highlighting a unique, efficiency-driven uptake within India's IT sector.
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The core driver of this adoption is the specific tool use functionality that allows Claude 3 models-including Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku-to interact with external data and systems. Unlike traditional Large Language Models (LLMs) that function as isolated text generators, Anthropic's tool use capability enables the model to reason, identify necessary actions, and execute functions dynamically.
For Indian enterprises, which manage vast portions of the world's back-end infrastructure, this capability is transformative. Developers can now define a set of tools-such as API calls, database queries, or ticketing systems-and the AI creates the necessary code to invoke these tools based on natural language requests. For instance, a request to "fix the login bug reported by Jane Smith" can trigger the AI to search a database for ticket details, analyze the error logs, and propose a code patch, effectively automating complex loops of the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
This technological leap is precipitating a labor market shift. The high prevalence of technical usage in India suggests that the role of the developer is evolving. Rather than writing every line of syntax, Indian tech professionals are increasingly operating as architects who guide AI agents. This aligns with the concept of the "pro-developer," a professional who leverages AI to handle routine execution while focusing on system design, logic, and optimization.
"Integrating Anthropic's tool use into our developer platform has been transformative. It directly helps us in our projects by enabling our AI to guide itself, learn from new data, discover optimal pathways, and execute tools dynamically, significantly reducing development time."
This sentiment reflects a broader trend among Indian tech CEOs who view agentic AI not merely as a productivity tool, but as a strategic necessity to maintain cost competitiveness and delivery speed in a tightening global market.
Recognizing this surge in technical demand, Anthropic is solidifying its physical presence in the region. Reports indicate that the San Francisco-based AI firm plans to open its first office in India, specifically in Bengaluru, by 2026. This move is part of a broader strategy to tap into the country's deep AI talent pool. The company currently hires a country lead to manage operations, acknowledging that India is critical to its long-term growth.
Furthermore, the Anthropic Economic Index report from September 2025 highlights uneven geographic adoption, with India standing out as a distinct outlier in enterprise API use. While adoption in Europe and North America is broad-based, the intensity of technical integration in India-fueled by platforms utilizing Claude Code and Amazon Bedrock deployments-demonstrates a market that is skipping the "experimental" phase and moving directly to production-grade implementation.
The integration of tools like Claude Code, an agentic command line interface, allows developers to accelerate workflows through natural language commands in the terminal. For India's IT services giants, such as Cognizant-which recently partnered with Anthropic to expand enterprise AI adoption-this translates to higher output per developer. By automating the "grunt work" of coding, Indian firms can potentially move up the value chain, offering high-level system architecture and AI solutioning services rather than just staff augmentation.
However, this shift also presents challenges. The demand for entry-level coding roles may contract as AI agents handle basic syntax and debugging. The industry faces an urgent need to reskill thousands of engineers to manage, audit, and orchestrate these AI agents. As noted in governance reports, enterprises must now gain visibility into what AI agents are generating and ensure they fit within security policies-a critical concern as autonomous agents begin to interact with production environments.
As Anthropic prepares for its physical expansion into Bengaluru in 2026, the trajectory for India's tech sector appears increasingly agentic. With Claude 3 models now available across major Indic languages and support for tool use hardening, the distinction between a developer and an AI operator is blurring. The rapid uptake of these tools suggests that by the time Anthropic's local office opens its doors, the Indian developer ecosystem will have already fundamentally altered its operating model, setting a new standard for how software is built globally.
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