The U.S. AI boom faces a significant challenge as most companies struggle to see real-world benefits, and India’s $300 billion IT industry is looking to capture the “deployment layer” to execute the work needed to make artificial intelligence profitable.
Indian IT companies, including Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro, and Tech Mahindra, are banking on their strong client relationships and enterprise experience to implement AI at scale.
They will reshape who captures the biggest profits from the AI boom, with 95% of generative AI pilots failing due to flawed integration and a “learning gap” between available tools and the teams implementing them.
A 2026 survey found that even as 90% of executives experiment with AI, 60% say the data and technologies at their companies are not ready.
Indian IT’s Opportunity
N. Chandrasekaran, chairperson of the Tata Group, said at the India AI Impact Summit that “AI will expand” the IT industry’s role in making technology work inside enterprise processes, which involves computer science expertise.
Ashwin Venkatesan, executive research leader at HFS Research, noted that familiarity alone is not enough, and being close to systems is not the same as being close to the decisions that matter.
They are in direct competition with American consulting giants such as Accenture, Deloitte, and McKinsey.
Challenges Ahead
An India IT pivot is not assured and fraught with risk, as mastery of back-office tech automation is also considered a liability as agentic AI eats away at the need for outsourcing.
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The threat became apparent to the market when India’s benchmark IT stocks index slumped nearly 6% in early February, after Anthropic launched its Claude Cowork agentic plug-in designed to automate high-volume, repetitive knowledge work.
Deployment Gap
Nandan Nilekani, co-founder and non-executive chairperson of Infosys, referred to this as a “deployment gap,” saying AI technology is far ahead of its actual use inside large corporations.
It offers an opportunity for companies like his to help address the deployment gap, with TCS reporting over $2.3 billion in annualized AI services revenue during the first quarter of 2026.
Indian IT companies could step in as the “middle person” to handle the challenges of chaotic data, aging legacy software, compliance requirements, and a shortage of people who understand both the technology and the business context it needs to operate, much like using Adobe Lightroom for complex editing tasks.
Partnerships and Competition
Partnering with AI companies has become standard practice across the tech and consulting industry, with TCS having agreements with Google Cloud, Nvidia, OpenAI, and Microsoft.
Infosys has tied up with Anthropic and OpenAI, while Accenture, Deloitte, and McKinsey have struck similar deals, and the companies that help large enterprises make the AI transition will sit at the center of one of the largest technology spending cycles in history.
Infosys estimates the total addressable market for AI services could reach between $300 billion and $400 billion by 2030.