Bengaluru is stuck in a new jam. Can it beat back the AI monster?

Chetan Bhagat
Mar 7, 2026 | 22:16 IST
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India’s IT sector contributes roughly 7% to GDP and its decline may not devastate the economy, but it will have consequences

Bengaluru has another deep concern these days, apart from the insane traffic. The cornerstone companies of its IT sector — such as Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, and Wipro — are getting hammered in the stock market. In the last month alone, these companies have lost around 20% — a fifth of their value. Over the past year, these former market darlings have shed almost a third of their market capitalisation.

The reason? The elephant in every boardroom in the world today — AI, or artificial intelligence. AI is disrupting many sectors, if not all. However, recent progress in AI-based coding — where you simply type in plain English what you want the code to do, and the AI generates it in seconds — has shaken the foundations of our multi-billion-dollar, multi-million-employee Indian IT sector.
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