In a striking signal of where India's $250-billion IT industry is headed, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has issued an unambiguous directive to its hundreds of thousands of employees - learn artificial intelligence, apply it in client engagements, and do not hesitate even if it means the company earns less in the short term.
Speaking at the NASSCOM Leadership Summit, TCS Managing Director and CEO K. Krithivasan outlined an AI adoption strategy that goes well beyond encouraging staff to experiment with tools like ChatGPT. The message was clear: passive usage is not enough. TCS employees must build solutions.
'If AI Does It Faster, Use AI'
The CEO's message to TCS associates was direct - wherever AI can do a job faster, better, or cheaper - it should be deployed, and clients should be told. This holds true even when replacing a human-delivered service with an AI-driven one would reduce the bill a client pays, and by extension, TCS's own revenue.
"It is not enough to use simple prompts on platforms such as ChatGPT," Krithivasan said, according to reports from the summit. "Staff must build solutions using AI." The statement underscores TCS's bet that long-term client trust and competitive positioning are worth more than near-term billing.
Boards are driving the demand
The push is not happening in a vacuum. Enterprise boards across industries have made AI adoption a boardroom priority. Krithivasan noted that directors are actively pushing management to demonstrate AI-driven efficiencies - and if TCS associates are not fluent in building AI solutions, a competitor will be.
The timing of the summit address was deliberate. It came in the wake of a turbulent week for IT and technology stocks globally, rattled by fears that advanced AI - capable of writing and reviewing code at speed - could hollow out the traditional IT services model that companies like TCS, Infosys, and Wipro have built over decades.
Senior employees lagging behind
One of the more candid admissions from the CEO concerned the generational divide within TCS itself. While younger employees have been quick to experiment with and adopt AI tools, senior staff have been notably slower to engage. Krithivasan called this out directly, urging veterans to "get their hands dirty" and close the gap.
The observation resonates across the industry. Experience and client relationships - long the currency of senior IT professionals - are of diminishing value if those same professionals cannot navigate the AI toolchains their clients increasingly expect to see deployed.
Industry pushes back on 'AI Doom' narrative
Across two days at NASSCOM, TCS was not alone in making this case. Multiple senior executives from India's top IT firms argued that AI is an accelerant, not an exterminator, for the sector. Rather than replacing IT services companies, they contend, AI expands the scope of what can be delivered—if firms and employees are willing to retool.
TCS, which employs over 600,000 people and reported revenues exceeding $29 billion in its last fiscal year, has significant stakes in getting this transition right. The company has already provided employees with AI learning tools and platforms; the CEO's message signals that the next phase is execution—not preparation.
The Bottom Line: Learn, Adopt, Build
Distilled to its essence, TCS's mandate is a four-word rally - Learn. Adopt. Build. Use. The company appears willing to absorb short-term revenue pain to ensure it remains indispensable to clients navigating an AI-first world—a calculated wager that the firms which hesitate risk becoming irrelevant far sooner than any AI could render them so.
