Artificial intelligence (AI) has become the defining force reshaping the global technology industry, but questions remain over who will ultimately capture the value—from frontier model developers and hyperscalers to IT services firms. In this interview with businessline, TCS Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director K Krithivasan discusses how AI is changing the economics of IT services, and why the next phase of enterprise adoption will hinge less on the latest models and more on reimagining business processes.
AI is delivering 10-15 per cent productivity improvements that you’re sharing with customers. Does the IT services industry eventually become a lower-revenue business unless clients significantly increase the amount of work they outsource?
It doesn’t impact the top line. In fact, we encourage our associates to go and talk to clients whenever there is an opportunity to deliver high productivity and proactively have the discussion, even if it becomes deflationary on the overall top line. Whenever customers see this benefit, they almost always use the extra savings or surplus to deliver more projects. So, it doesn’t net impact the top line. It brings the productivity to our customers.
