As artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes global tech spending, India’s IT services majors are responding with a leadership reset. New chief AI roles, dedicated business units, and AI-linked revenue disclosures point to a structural shift in how the sector is gearing up for growth in the automation era.
This shift is already visible in the pace of leadership changes. At least five of the country’s top 10 IT services firms—including Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Infosys Ltd, Wipro Ltd, LTM Ltd (formerly LTIMindtree), and Persistent Systems Ltd—introduced or expanded AI-focused roles over the past year, more than in the previous two years combined.
“As AI becomes more widespread, there will be an increasing need to make and sell AI-specific proposals to clients,” said Pramod Gubbi, founder of Marcellus Investment Managers. “This is why we can expect more IT outsourcers across the board to double down on such leadership roles.”
Leadership bets
On 1 April, fourth-largest Wipro became the latest company to announce a new AI business unit called AI-Native Business & Platforms, to be led by Nagendra Bandaru, its president of the technology services business line. The new unit will include Wipro’s proprietary AI offerings and AI-related business arms.
Earlier, last October, Amit Kapur took over as TCS’s chief AI and services transformation officer. Kapur, who was the company’s head of UK and Ireland, heads the AI and services transformation unit, which is the third AI unit of the company, and reports directly to chief operating officer Aarthi Subramanian.
The focus was not just on heading AI-specific business units, but also on selling those technologies. In May last year, second-largest Infosys announced Vivek Sinha—an associate vice-president—as the global head of sales for AI and Automation.
Mid-sized IT firms, too, took steps in this direction. Sixth-largest LTM announced Manoj Kothiyal as the chief business head for AI in November last year. Five months ago, the company launched BlueVerse, a dedicated AI business unit that would include its AI products and platforms.
In August, Persistent Systems announced Sameer Dixit as the global practice head for data and analytics, AI & integration. However, the company does not have one fixed AI offering and sells its AI solutions through its Persistent.AI service offering.
In January 2024, third-largest HCLTech announced Ajay Singh, senior vice-president at WNS, as the global director and head of AI.
Fifth-largest Tech Mahindra announced Nikhil Malhotra—its global head of innovation—as the company’s AI head around 2024.
Namratha Dharshan, chief business leader of ISG, a a Connecticut-based research and advisory firm, said this was done to drive two mandates.
“Firstly, building and testing AI solutions internally before scaling to clients, including internal consolidation of solutions, building CoEs (centres of excellence), and investing in continuous expansion of capabilities,” said Dharshan.
“The other mandate is to cut organizational friction and accelerate innovation and go‑to‑market and, most importantly, ensure AI delivers measurable RoI (return on investment) at a time when enterprises are under increasing value pressure,” she added.
However, even as companies formalize AI leadership, questions have been raised about how substantive these roles are.
“Nearly half of the AI leaders surveyed report that their organization has simply reclassified existing positions to include AI responsibilities,” read a 24 February report from Chicago-based executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles .
“This approach has created confusion about what constitutes true AI leadership and has inflated compensation expectations across the board, because these roles have a remit wider than AI alone,” the report added.
Heidrick & Struggles bases its comment on data it compiled from a survey conducted in summer 2025, featuring responses from 318 executives.
Not just IT services
To be sure, the shift mirrors a broader hiring wave beyond IT services. A Mint report dated 18 February, which cited data from executive search firm Longhouse, noted that there have been at least 50 AI-focused leadership hirings—most notably chief AI officers—across sectors such as fintech, banking, manufacturing, logistics, media and enterprise technology over the past 12 months.
“We are seeing more demand for AI leadership as adoption is increasing across the board. For example, companies in the manufacturing sector that were initially slow to tech and AI adoption are now accelerating their plans to induct AI leadership talent,” said K Sudarshan, managing director for India and regional chair for Asia at EMA Partners, which is a Mumbai-based executive search firm.
AI starts paying off
The leadership push is now being backed by revenue visibility. At least five large homegrown IT services firms have shared revenue from automation tools in the past year.
HCLTech disclosed its AI revenue in October last year, becoming the first of the big five to share such figures. As of January, the Noida-based company reported about $246 million in revenue from advanced projects, including agentic AI, AI factories and physical AI for the July-December 2025 period.
Two months later, TCS reported annualized AI revenue of $1.8 billion as of December 2025. Another two months later in February, Infosys for the first time said that its AI-related revenue was $280.4 million, accounting for about 5.5% of its $5.1 billion revenue in the third quarter.
TCS, Infosys, and HCLTech ended FY25 with revenues of $30.18 billion, $19.28 billion, and $13.84 billion, respectively. Each of them will announce their FY26 results later this month.
Smaller firms move first
Notably, it was the smaller IT firms—with less than $5 billion in annual revenue—that moved first, both in disclosing AI-led revenue and reshaping their organisations.
Happiest Minds became the first company to share AI-led revenue in October 2023. It got about $11 million in the third quarter.
Coforge named Vikrant Karnik as its head of AI initiatives in June 2024 whereas a year ago, Mphasis announced Anup Nair as the chief technology officer of Mphasis.AI. In September 2023, Girish Pai took charge as Hexaware Technologies' global head for data and AI.
Then, in August last year, Sonata Software Ltd’s management said it expects AI-enabled services to contribute 20% of the company’s revenue over the next three years, which translates to about $330 million by FY28.