The IT sector’s outlook for the new financial year is grim. Majors such as TCS, Infosys and HCL Tech missed their 2024-25 profit estimates and gave cautious guidance for 2025-26, lower than the market estimate in some cases. This is particularly worrying for India, which depends on the sector for both formal employment generation and services exports. Indian IT and IT-enabled services companies employ over 5.5 million professionals. The two largest companies, TCS and Infosys, saw modest hiring growths in 2024-25 after a slump the year before. The new year has seen an uptick, but their hiring intent for 2025-26 is nowhere near the numbers the country’s engineering graduates used to look forward to earlier. The numbers cloak a bitter truth: AI is fast reshaping the job market, and India has yet to catch up. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said AI already performs half the coding tasks in many companies, the bread and butter of Indian IT services.
There is an urgent need for a rethink in the government and large corporations’ approach to ensuring that the current and future generations can gear themselves up to face the job market disruption. The National Education Policy 2020’s emphasis on coding in schools now seems outdated. Generative AI can write and optimise code faster than any human. India must quickly pivot toward AI and robotics education at all levels. The NEP emphasises AI integration, but implementation remains patchy. Corporates have developed many reskilling initiatives, but short-term upskilling must be completed sooner.
Several nations are steaming ahead in the reskilling race. China is building AI-powered ‘cloud schools’ and smart manufacturing hubs. Finland offers free AI courses to citizens, and South Korea has set the goal of incorporating AI coursework into the national curriculum at all grades. India, meanwhile, is in the pilot phase, partnering with MNCs to develop education modules for students and entrepreneurs. The challenge is to magnify this exercise many times to cater to millions who risk obsolescence. India must institutionalise AI fluency and critical thinking. The human-machine alliance must be inculcated in universities and workplaces. The corporate sector must raise substantial funds to reskill their employees for AI-augmented roles. The IndiaAI Mission should be at the vanguard of the reskilling revolution.