India’s Wipro said it expected rapid AI adoption to accelerate demand for software service providers, pushing back against investor worries that the technology could weaken the outsourcing-led model that powers the $283 billion sector.
Top executive Hari Shetty, Chief Strategist and Technology Officer, said in an interview that current concerns revolve too narrowly around automation. He argued that the industry is moving toward “autonomous enterprises,” a shift he described as a fundamentally different and deeper form of transformation requiring long-term partnerships with clients.
AI seen as the industry’s next big expansion cycle
Shetty called AI “probably the single biggest opportunity” for IT services, comparing its scale to the discovery of electricity or the internet. He said the debate often misses a broader structural change and instead focuses on task automation, which he sees as only the first layer of what is coming.
Citing World Economic Forum estimates, Shetty said AI could create 170 million jobs globally while disrupting around 92 million roles. For India’s IT sector, he said this would translate into strong demand for skills in model training, data curation and responsible AI.
“The primary differentiation here is people who know AI and people who do not know AI,” he said, adding that Wipro continues to see strong demand for younger, “AI-literate” engineers despite speculation that the traditional staffing pyramid may hollow out.
IT firms expected to gain from ‘autonomous enterprise’ shift
Shetty said AI will broaden, not shrink, the responsibilities of service providers, much like the impact of cloud computing in previous years. What companies now need, he said, are technology partners who understand their domain processes deeply enough to help them transition into AI-driven autonomous enterprises.
He expects this transition to shape technology spending over the next decade. “We clearly think AI is a dominant force, at least for the next decade to two decades, in terms of the kind of business that it will drive,” he said.