Legacy IT Leaders Say India’s AI Future Lies in Talent, IP
Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit, tech chiefs say artificial intelligence is forcing India to shift from outsourcing scale to intellectual ownership.
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Leaders from Accenture Plc, Wipro Ltd and HCL Technologies Ltd on Thursday said India’s AI edge will hinge on talent, applied innovation and intellectual property (IP) ownership, not scale alone, pointing to a strategic shift from the country’s decades-old services-driven growth model.
For decades, India’s technology rise was powered by scale-driven IT services and global outsourcing. Artificial intelligence is now reshaping that model, shifting value toward those who build and own platforms, products and proprietary systems rather than those who simply deploy them.
Roshni Nadar Malhotra, chairperson of HCL Technologies, said India must move from a services-led nation to an IP-led nation if it wants to capture durable value in the AI economy.
“IP scales infinitely in the AI economy,” she said, arguing that value accrues to those who build and own platforms, models and products, not just those who deploy them. She said AI is reshaping India’s growth equation from scale-led revenue to intelligence-led value creation.
Using a cricket analogy, she likened AI to a T20 power hitter, referring to India wicketkeeper-batter Ishan Kishan’s recent 77 off 40 balls. “AI is the power hitter. It is clearing boundaries that used to require entire teams, but the game is not batter versus nobody,” she said.
“Our job is to set the field, to position our nation where the ball is going, not where it was, to invest in the skills that AI cannot replicate,” she said.
“The competitive edge in the AI era is not computing power; it is clarity of thinking,” she said, adding that leadership and judgment will determine who benefits from the shift.
Rishad Premji, executive chairman of Wipro, said how India responds to AI in the next few years will shape not only its economic trajectory but also its ability to solve problems for over a billion people.
India’s advantage, he said, will not be defined by the size of models or infrastructure, but by where and how AI is applied.
“It will be defined by where we apply AI and how responsibly we deploy it and whether we can translate capability into real impact for governments, citizens and enterprises,” he said.
He pointed to Wipro’s AI pilot under the Azim Premji Foundation initiative to track early signs of tuberculosis in Tamil Nadu.
“The solutions that work here in India, at scale, low cost, multilingual and resilient, can travel far beyond our own borders,” he said, noting that similar last-mile challenges exist across Asia, Africa and Latin America.
With more than 650,000 professionals already working in AI-related roles in India, Premji argued that talent development will be decisive.
AI fluency, he said, must extend beyond engineers to teachers, nurses, administrators and small business owners. He cited government efforts to train 10 million young people in AI and industry partnerships with universities to expand practical training and apprenticeships.
“This capability is reinforced by a vibrant innovation ecosystem,” Premji said, pointing to India’s more than 4,000 deep-tech and AI startups.
India, he added, has the opportunity to become “not just a builder of the technology, but a place where AI is tested against real-world complexity and made to work at scale.”
Julie Sweet, chair and chief executive officer of Accenture, framed the transition as a reinvention of the workforce and enterprise model.
Sweet said Accenture has grown from about 275,000 employees in 2013 to more than 750,000 today, with revenue rising to about $70 billion.
Sweet also said Accenture has more than 350,000 “reinventors” in India, with teams tightly integrated across its AI hubs in the US, Europe, the Middle East and Japan.
“With AI fundamentally changing what an entry-level job looks like, the company is changing the roles and investing in training,” she said, announcing that Accenture will hire more entry-level employees this year than last, even though the required skills and onboarding processes are being redesigned.
“When companies and countries embrace new technologies and then use them to drive growth and productivity, they prosper,” Sweet said, adding that advanced AI should be no different.
