TCS CEO at Nasscom event: We are not scared AI will take away our livelihood, we believe it will ...

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) CEO K Krithivasan reportedly said the company views artificial intelligence (AI) as an opportunity rather than a threat to jobs. His comments come even as concerns grow about AI’s impact on India’s IT sector. According to a Reuters report, speaking at the Nasscom Technology and Leadership Forum in Mumbai this week, Krithivasan said the company is encouraging employees to adopt AI tools to deliver services faster and at lower cost, even if it affects existing revenue streams.

At the event, Krithivasan said (as reviewed by Reuters), "We are telling associates that if you find that you can do something faster, better, cheaper with AI, you should probably go and tell your customers, even if it cannibalises revenue. We are not afraid this technology will take away our livelihood. We believe it is going to open up more, so you enjoy the benefits the more you do, and not by resisting the change."




His remarks come at a time when investor concerns over AI disrupting the labour-intensive business model of Indian IT firms have erased about $68.6 billion in market value in February. TCS’s position aligns with rival Wipro, whose chief strategist and technology officer, Hari Shetty, told Reuters that wider AI adoption is expected to create more jobs than it replaces.

Meanwhile, India’s Nifty IT index recently declined 21% this month, putting it on track for its weakest monthly performance in nearly 23 years, the report adds.

How Anthropic’s AI model wiped out billions from Indian IT stocks

Indian IT stocks took a hit earlier this month after AI company Anthropic launched new tools that can automate office work. This spooked investors, who worried that AI could eat into traditional software companies' business. Stocks of major Indian IT firms, such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and HCLTech, fell sharply as a result.

The trouble started when Anthropic released a tool built for corporate legal teams. The company, which makes the popular AI chatbot Claude, said the tool could handle tasks like reviewing contracts, sorting legal documents, managing compliance paperwork and drafting legal briefs, the work that is typically done by large teams of people.

The fear that AI could replace such work triggered a massive sell-off earlier this month. Indian IT stocks lost nearly Rs 1.9 lakh crore in total market value in a single day. Infosys and Mphasis dropped more than 7% each, while TCS, LTIMindtree, Coforge and HCL Tech fell between 5% and 7%. Another IT ginat, Wipro, declined nearly 4%. The combined value of companies in the Nifty IT index fell below Rs 30 lakh crore.

The impact was felt globally, as well. Nvidia and Microsoft each fell around 3%, while Alphabet and Amazon slipped between 1% and 2%.

More recently, IBM also felt the heat. Its shares recorded the steepest decline in 25 years after Anthropic said its Claude Code tool could modernise COBOL, an old programming language widely used in IBM systems. Anthropic said this kind of work, which traditionally required large teams and years of effort, could now largely be done by AI.