India’s middle class faces a looming AI-driven job crisis, warns Marcellus Investment Managers founder Saurabh Mukherjea, who says the country’s corporate culture is becoming aggressively “American” in its pursuit of profit and efficiency.
Speaking on the Bharatvaarta podcast, Mukherjea drew a sharp parallel between India’s evolving corporate practices and the early waves of job displacement seen in the West during the rise of automation in the 1990s
“We are actually quite American,” he said. “Our companies are commercially oriented. Hiring and firing norms are changing — and AI is now hitting the workforce hard.”
Citing recent trends, Mukherjea said Indian IT giants like HCL Technologies are openly aiming to do “more with fewer people.” The shift, he stressed, is no longer limited to IT. “Financial services, media, management consultancy — even my job could get automated,” he added.
This wave, he warned, is set to batter India’s youth-heavy labor market more severely than older economies like France or Japan. “The median age here is 28. Roughly 10 million graduates enter the market every year — and AI hits junior, entry-level jobs hardest,” he explained.
India’s reliance on repetitive white-collar work makes it even more vulnerable. “We don’t have as many creative jobs. Our economy was built on labor arbitrage, and that’s the work AI is best at disrupting,” he said.
The third blow? An increasingly ruthless business ethos. Mukherjea pointed to his own portfolio companies, where CEOs have pitched automation plans that would eliminate a third of their workforce within five years. “They tell me, ‘You as a shareholder will benefit,’” he recalled. “I’m not sure I want it, but it’s clear they do.”
His visits to factories in Chennai and Telangana painted a stark picture — entire production lines now run by machines, with minimal human presence. “From milk to ice cream, it’s all robotized,” he said.
For Mukherjea, this isn’t just a phase. “There is a disruption coming,” he said. “We can’t look to politicians. It’s up to us — as workers — to adapt.”