Enterprise Search in India: RAG vs the Old Intranet

Ask anyone at a large Indian company how they find an old policy, a past proposal or last year's contract, and you'll probably hear a familiar story. They search the intranet, scroll through dozens of results, open several files and eventually ask a colleague for help.

The problem isn't always a lack of information. It's finding the right information when you need it. That's one reason enterprise search in India is evolving, with technologies such as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) offering a different way to access company knowledge.

Why Companies Are Investing in Finding Information Faster

According to IMARC Group, the global enterprise search market was valued at USD 6.7 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 14.5 billion by 2034, growing at a CAGR of 8.77% from 2026 to 2034. The report attributes part of this growth to advances in AI and natural language processing.

These figures represent the global market, not India specifically. We couldn't find a reliable India-only market estimate, so it's important not to treat the global numbers as a measure of India's market size. They do, however, indicate growing investment in helping organisations find and use information more effectively.

Where Traditional Intranet Search Falls Short

Traditional intranet search often relies heavily on keywords. Search for “notice period policy” when a document uses the phrase “resignation terms”, and you might miss the very information you need.

Even when the right file appears, someone still has to open it, read through the content and determine whether it answers the question. The problem becomes harder when company knowledge is spread across PDFs, scanned documents and shared drives that aren't indexed properly.

This is where modern enterprise search software can make a difference: helping employees find relevant information without making them search through every document themselves.

What RAG Adds to the Old Intranet

RAG stands for retrieval-augmented generation. Instead of relying only on a keyword search or a model's existing knowledge, a RAG system first retrieves relevant passages from your company's documents and then uses them to generate an answer.

A well-designed system also identifies the source document and page, allowing employees to verify the information themselves.

That traceability matters in business. When an employee asks about a policy, contract or internal process, an answer they can check is far more useful than one they simply have to trust.

What to Ask Before Choosing Enterprise Search Software

Before selecting an enterprise search solution, consider a few practical questions:

1. Where is your data processed? Some organisations cannot send internal documents to third-party services.
2. Can it read different document formats? Check support for scanned documents, OCR and PDFs, not just text files.
3. Can answers be verified? Look for links to the original source and relevant page.
4. How are permissions managed? Employees should only see information they're authorised to access.
5. Can you change AI models later? Model flexibility can help you adapt without rebuilding the entire system.

These questions help you evaluate whether a tool fits your security requirements and the way your organisation manages information.

How AskEICE Approaches Enterprise Search in India

AskEICE is EICE Technology's AI knowledge agent, designed to turn company documents into a searchable knowledge system using RAG.

It ingests PDFs, scanned images through OCR and office documents. Employees can access it through WhatsApp, without needing a separate app or login. It can be deployed fully on-premises, so data doesn't go to a third party.

AskEICE also supports separate, isolated environments for multiple organisations or teams, with role-based access. Its model-agnostic architecture allows the AI provider to be changed, while source-attributed answers link back to the exact document and page.

The solution is aimed at enterprises with distributed workforces, extensive documentation and demanding data-privacy or compliance requirements.

If your team is exploring how RAG can work with existing company documents, we welcome the opportunity to discuss how AskEICE could fit your requirements.