Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country\u2019s largest IT services exporter, also shed more than 23,400 jobs<\/a>, with its employee headcount falling to 584,519 in the financial year ending in March 2026 from 607,979 in financial year 2025.<\/p>\nFirms such as TCS and Infosys have long powered middle-class aspirations in India through stable, well-paying jobs, but that pathway has become increasingly uncertain as hiring slows and skill requirements shift in the age of AI.<\/p>\n
According to data from TeamLease Digital, a talent solutions firm that caters to the IT industry, India\u2019s tech ecosystem has seen close to 40,000 layoffs in the past year or so, including many mid-level managerial roles.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnlike previous cycles, this is a structural \u2013 not cyclical \u2013 correction driven by AI-led productivity compression, slower global discretionary tech spending, and a pivot away from legacy services,\u201d said Ms Neeti Sharma, chief executive of TeamLease Digital.<\/p>\n
As the pandemic ebbed, many Indian IT services firms had looked to rebound to their conventional work model that relied on a large workforce, enabling them to bid for and take on a large number of contracts from clients.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey went on a hiring spree, wanting to get back on track revenue-wise, manpower-wise,\u201d said Mr Ashish Singh, founder of HireMaven, a firm that specialises in recruitment for the IT sector.<\/p>\n
Salaries were doubled or tripled as firms retained talent and hired new ones. Reality, however, hit hard soon as projects did not materialise in the anticipated large numbers amid global economic uncertainty, making large staff \u201cbench strengths\u201d a liability for employers.<\/p>\n
AI, too, began to make its impact felt more and more around the same time. A lot of the basic coding work was outsourced to AI repositories with autonomous or semi-autonomous tools that can assist directly with software engineering tasks on the basis of mere prompts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a firm had 10 employees engaged in coding and development, they today need just one person with the knowledge of AI to handle all that work,\u201d said Mr Singh.<\/p>\n
This made many junior employees engaged in basic coding tasks as well as their mid-level team managers redundant, and it prompted employers to reduce headcounts while they invest in AI tools.<\/p>\n
As investments into AI begin to yield further results and companies put in more money to expand profitable AI-driven operations, experts fear India\u2019s IT sector will reel from more \u201cworkforce rationalisation\u201d in the coming months.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of employees who are unable to upskill and align themselves to the future needs of an organisation will get impacted in the next 12 to 18 months,\u201d said Ms Sharma.<\/p>\n
Mr Kashyap Kompella, founder of RPA2AI Research, an analysis and advisory firm focused on AI governance and policy, said AI will not eliminate the need for developers.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir value will shift from code creation to validation, testing, integration, security and production reliability. These are areas where human judgment, context and accountability remain critical,\u201d he said. \u201cSo the technology sector is not eliminating human roles, but we will see a different mix of roles and skills.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond the short-term retrenchment phase also lies the promise of new jobs as employment patterns shift in the continuously evolving technology sector. The emergence of new technologies is creating roles for professionals in AI, data, cybersecurity and cloud computing, demand for which continues to outpace supply.<\/p>\n
Moreover, skilled engineers who understand specific industries such as finance, healthcare, manufacturing or telecommunications and can apply AI within those contexts will be in higher demand, added Mr Kompella.<\/p>\n
Employment opportunities are expanding beyond traditional IT services too. This includes roles in the booming data centre ecosystem that requires not just technicians and cybersecurity professionals but also civil engineers to help set up these centres and energy experts to keep them running efficiently.<\/p>\n
While an October 2025 report from NITI Aayog, an Indian government think-tank, warned that AI-driven automation could displace up to two million jobs in India\u2019s tech services sector by 2031, it also added that if the country were to skill people strategically, the number of jobs in the sector could swell by around four million in the next five years.<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has undertaken several measures to skill the country\u2019s workforce in new and emerging sectors. An estimated 168,000 individuals have been trained in various AI-related courses and the ministry is setting up labs in Tier 2 and 3 cities across the country to offer foundational-level courses in AI and data-related fields.<\/p>\n
India already accounts for around 16 per cent of the global AI talent pool, but lack of adequate talent remains a concern.<\/p>\n
According to a report from Deloitte, Indian AI talent demand is projected to grow from around 600,000 to more than 1.25 million by 2027. However, the AI market is expected to grow at 25 per cent to 35 per cent, potentially signalling a demand-supply gap in the talent pool and a need for upskilling existing talent.<\/p>\n
Ms Gupta, whose job contract ends in April 2026, invested in a 12-week online AI-skilling course from MIT Professional Education that cost her around 200,000 rupees (S$2,700). \u201cYou have to keep yourself upskilled to be relevant in the employment market,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
But there is a wider message in all this AI-driven churn for Indian youth waiting to enter the workforce and their parents. The conventional strategy of studying computer science in college to become a software developer is no longer sustainable as entry-level coding jobs shrink.<\/p>\n
Many became software programmers with the hope of being deployed overseas to work for their employer\u2019s clients, particularly in the US, and earning much higher salaries in US dollars \u2013 a dream that, too, has petered out with increased restriction on the employment of overseas workers in America.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll this is a reality check for Indian families,\u201d said Ms Sharma from TeamLease Digital.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need parents and their children to understand the shift in skills and domains that is happening right now in India and pivot into streams other than computer science so that each one stands a better chance at securing employment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW DELHI \u2013 Many Indian workers form the backbone of information technology firms worldwide. Ms Tanya Gupta (not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-402743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}