Speaking about the rapid evolution of AI at the AI Impact Summit, Chandrasekaran said enterprise adoption will be contextual and deeply embedded within business processes — not a plug-and-play disruption.
“Enterprise AI is contextual. You can’t just throw IT companies out,” he said, arguing that there is significant latent demand waiting to be tapped as companies look to modernise legacy systems and integrate AI into core operations.
Enterprise AI: Integration over replacement
While public discourse around AI often centres on large language models and consumer applications, Chandrasekaran emphasised that the real commercial opportunity lies in helping enterprises transform existing workflows, data systems, and decision-making frameworks.
This shift, he suggested, plays directly to the strengths of India’s IT services firms — which have decades of experience managing complex enterprise technology stacks across global corporations.
Rather than replacing IT service providers, AI could expand the scope of their role: from maintenance and migration to large-scale AI integration, model deployment, governance, and hybrid “human+AI” execution frameworks.
Latent demand, long runway
Chandrasekaran’s comments come at a time when investors and analysts are debating whether AI will compress traditional IT services revenues through automation, or create a new multi-year investment cycle.
His view leans toward the latter.
Enterprises globally are sitting on years of accumulated technical debt and fragmented digital systems. Embedding AI into these environments requires contextual understanding, domain expertise, data cleaning, cybersecurity safeguards, and compliance alignment — areas where established IT firms have institutional capability.
India in the race
For India, the stakes are strategic.
The country’s IT services sector has long been a pillar of export earnings and white-collar employment. If AI adoption accelerates enterprise transformation spending, Indian firms could be well positioned to capture a significant share of that value.
At the same time, success will depend on rapid reskilling, investment in proprietary AI platforms, and the ability to move up the value chain beyond cost arbitrage.
The core message: AI may be disruptive, but it is also expansionary. For India’s IT services industry, the race is not about survival — it is about scale, speed and strategic execution in what Chandrasekaran calls a civilisational shift.
