R Srikrishna , CEO Hexaware Technologies, at a press conference in Chennai

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Bijoy Ghosh

Mid-tier IT-services firm Hexaware aims to capture a larger share of the IT-spend pool by leveraging AI to help enterprises build custom software instead of relying on traditional SaaS vendors.Speaking at a media roundtable during the company’s AI day in Chennai on Friday, CEO R Srikrishna suggested that with AI, it is no longer expensive or time-consuming to build custom software.“The global SaaS market is around $900 billion. You do not need to replace all of it. There will be some people who do not want to switch, some who can not change for regulatory and compliance reasons. But we see that there are enough people who do want to change things,” he said.Hexaware launched its ‘Zero license’ enterprise offering earlier this year to help organisations replace bloated SaaS workflows by adding an AI layer on top of existing systems.Regarding token expenses for these custom-AI solutions, Srikrishna said most of the token spend will be a one-time cost for the development of the software.“I think intelligent design allows you to say which functionality should just be static software and which functionality should be agentic that needs token consumption. I can tell you that for most workflow software, 90 per cent of it will not need this,” he added.Interestingly, Srikrishna said the company is willing to cannibalise some of its traditional IT-services revenue in the implementation of these legacy software.“The deflation is clear. We are not running away from it. In fact, I am pushing my sales guys to proactively propose ways for clients to reduce their technology spending. Because if a client is spending ₹100 today, we can take it down to ₹70, rather than risk someone else taking it to zero. I think we will outrun the deflation by picking new lanes of work,” he said.On talent, he said Hexaware expects to continue hiring, particularly in new AI-related roles like Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) with a target of adding 250 FDEs over the next 12 months. He added that AI will change the composition of the workforce with young AI-native talent to become more important.On the recent data breach at the company, he said while the company is conducting a detailed investigation, it believes that the compromised data is most likely old or potentially fabricated.Published on August 21, 2026