AI agents could soon handle shopping decisions and transactions for consumers, forcing ecommerce, travel, and insurance platforms to rethink pricing, customer engagement, and security
Apexa RaiNew Delhi4 min read Last Updated : Sep 26 2026 | 11:37 AM IST
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India’s digital commerce companies are preparing for a future in which personal artificial intelligence (AI) assistants could increasingly make online shopping decisions and carry out transactions on behalf of consumers.
Ecommerce platforms, online travel agencies and insurance marketplaces have begun reassessing product pricing, customer acquisition costs and bot-verification systems as AI agents capable of operating with a degree of autonomy gain ground, The Economic Times reported on Saturday.
These personal assistants can book restaurant tables, schedule product returns, find savings on car insurance and negotiate for services. This could increase transaction volumes for online businesses, but also reduce opportunities for platforms to interact directly with consumers.
With less human interaction, real-time offers, personalised discounts, cross-selling and up-selling opportunities could take a hit. AI agents could also misinterpret a user’s instructions and make an unintended or potentially costly decision.
Companies are working on technical and legal safeguards to address these risks, industry experts cited by The Economic Times said. Some have also approached lawyers to assess changes required to their privacy policies to comply with India’s data protection law and obtain consent for transactions carried out by AI agents.
Personal AI assistants have not yet become widely popular in India. However, preparations among Indian companies have accelerated following the launch of Meta’s Muse in the US.
Muse can autonomously handle tasks ranging from scheduling meetings to cancelling forgotten subscriptions. It was downloaded 902,000 times in the six days following its September 8 launch, according to Sensor Tower data cited by The Economic Times.
The app reportedly surpassed OpenAI’s ChatGPT, xAI’s Grok and Anthropic’s Claude in downloads during that period.
Muse is not available in India yet. But its potential to scale rapidly through Meta’s distribution network in a country with 958 million internet users has put technology companies on alert.
AI already entering the shopping cart
Some Indian companies have already started enabling agentic shopping on their platforms.
Zomato, the Eternal-owned food delivery platform, has released a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that allows AI assistants to discover restaurants, browse menus, build carts and place orders.
Online travel agency MakeMyTrip has announced a collaboration with OpenAI that allows travellers to make bookings through its Myra interface. Financial services platform Groww also offers an MCP connection that allows users to track and query their portfolios through AI tools.
Industry experts said AI agents could help increase transactions, but could also disrupt the direct relationship between platforms and consumers. Companies may therefore have to rethink how they market products and retain users.
“Agentic transactions can be both disruptive and opportunistic for consumer tech companies,” Ritika Rathi, executive director leading the retail and consumer practice at PwC India, told The Economic Times.
Marketplaces may need to reconsider commission-sharing arrangements with sellers and retrain recommendation engines, Rathi said. Advertising spending and services such as push notifications, email, loyalty programmes and app engagement could also change as companies seek to bring consumers back to their platforms.
Meesho sees agentic shopping as an opportunity, but has also introduced safeguards to manage potential abuse, according to Kiran Kumar, head of platform engineering and AI at the ecommerce platform.
Security concerns, high costs
AI assistants are emerging as a new area of competition among leading technology companies. Gartner expects global spending on AI assistants to rise from $16.5 billion in 2025 to $29.2 billion in 2026.
JPMorgan has forecast that Meta’s Muse could become the most-used AI application since ChatGPT.
Security concerns have also grown as AI agents such as Muse, Instinct, Grokbot, OpenClaw and Hermes gain traction in the US. Their emergence is prompting technology companies to reassess existing policies and business strategies around autonomous AI systems.
Topics :Artificial intelligenceAI ModelsAI systemsIndia ecommerce marketecommerceZomatoBS Web Reports
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First Published: Sep 26 2026 | 11:35 AMIST
