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These days, pricing for contracts is more likely to be dictated by performance outcomes [File]
| Photo Credit: REUTERS
Artificial intelligence promised to disrupt India’s IT industry and it is delivering.
Outsourcing giants like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech and Cognizant are rejigging business models, increasingly tying fees to performance outcomes instead of hours worked, as clients demand steep price cuts and more productivity.
Industry executives also say they are losing some work entirely as customers use AI to shift tasks in-house, while all the uncertainty that the new technology has brought is resulting in shorter contracts.
And where once the big IT companies won contracts because they could point to their huge employee base, that has become less and less of an advantage as AI automates more and more tasks — levelling the playing field for smaller rivals which have jumped at opportunities to snatch business.


