Indian IT companies must rethink their operations and India should develop its own language models as artificial intelligence continues to transform the sector, according to HCLTech CEO C Vijayakumar.
The rise of generative AI poses a challenge to traditional business models of Indian IT firms, which primarily provide operations support and software services to U.S.-based clients.
“The underlying themes are not the same as cloud and digitization and other things … This is very different. The changes that AI is assuring are very different, and we need to be more proactive to even categorize our revenues to create completely new businesses,” Vijayakumar said at an industry event in Mumbai.
Generative AI, which can automate software coding and numerous other tasks, is expected to accelerate product development and enhance workforce efficiency. Vijayakumar cited an example of a major financial services firm with a $1 billion technology transformation project that could be completed in three-and-a-half years instead of five.
He also emphasized the importance of India developing its own language models to reduce reliance on foreign technologies and mitigate risks from geopolitical tensions. Large language models are trained on vast datasets to generate text and other forms of content.
“We should not assume that these (language) models will continue to be open source. I think these are going to be the coins on which the geopolitics is going to be played off,” Vijayakumar warned, suggesting that some countries might impose restrictions on their usage.
“To have a long-term competitive advantage, it makes a lot of sense to build and the costs are coming down. We need to find ways to very economically create a training infrastructure to train the models,” he added.
Industry leaders also stressed the need for continuous adaptation to keep up with rapid technological advancements.
“I think we have to be paranoid. We have to be non-complacent. That is the way we can manage to keep up with what’s going on in the industry,” said Infosys CEO Salil Parekh.
