Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran said on Wednesday that he believes Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) will ride the artificial intelligence wave.
“I get to see both sides. I’ve got one side (which says) TCS has to ride this AI wave. Somebody else will say they have to survive this AI wave. I feel that (it’s) going to ride the AI wave,” Chandrasekaran said during a panel discussion in the national capital. The discussion coincided with the India AI Impact Summit.
He stressed that the Indian IT companies should be viewed as enterprise integrators rather than standalone technology vendors. Unlike consumer markets, where a breakthrough product can quickly replace older systems, large organisations operate within complex contexts involving legacy processes, supplier networks, data environments and multiple software interfaces. Integrating new technologies into such ecosystems can take years, he said, citing how enterprise platforms like SAP or Salesforce required long implementation cycles despite fears that packaged software would eliminate custom development work.
In the AI era, he argued, the integrator role becomes even more critical. While global AI models are trained on broad internet-scale data, real enterprise value depends on industry-specific and company-specific datasets. Building solutions that incorporate this contextual data — whether in banking, manufacturing or automotive operations — will require deep domain knowledge, system integration expertise and long-term client relationships, areas where IT services firms are already embedded.
Integrator Advantage
His comments come amid heightened scrutiny of the sector, as recent volatility in Indian IT stocks reflects investor concerns that AI-led automation could compress traditional outsourcing revenues. Analysts and industry executives have said market reactions partly stem from uncertainty over how quickly firms can pivot delivery models and demonstrate AI-driven growth.
He framed the remark in the context of AI’s scale and inevitability, arguing that the technology represents a structural shift rather than a cyclical disruption. He explained that the impact of AI on any company will depend on the individual circumstance and position of the company. This, he said, means that AI’s value proposition for every company will be different.
Chandrasekaran pointed to implications within the Tata Group, noting that different businesses will adopt AI in distinct ways depending on their maturity and operational footprint. New industrial projects, for instance, could be designed “AI-first” from inception, potentially improving precision, quality and cost efficiency compared with retrofitting AI into existing facilities. Across sectors, he said, companies must ask fundamental questions about where AI will drive productivity, enable new business models or create differentiation.
The Tata Sons chairman described AI as a “fundamental technological change” and even a “civilisational change”, positioning it as the next major infrastructure transition after steam engines, electricity and the internet. Such shifts, he noted, historically trigger anxiety about business survival and job losses, but ultimately unlock new demand and opportunities.
Civilisational Shift
According to him, infrastructure-level innovations tend to expand markets by lowering costs and enabling previously unviable use cases. AI, he said, will similarly reduce the cost of functions such as diagnosis, translation and basic analysis, allowing enterprises to undertake work that was earlier too expensive or complex. As costs fall and productivity rises, demand for services typically increases, creating fresh growth avenues rather than shrinking the opportunity set.