What They Said: K Krithivasan of Tata Consultancy Services on AI
Let’s take a look at what K Krithivasan, CEO and MD of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has said about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the opportunity the technology creates for the Information Technology (IT) services industry. Across multiple interactions and analyst meets, Krithivasan has shared TCS’s plans for its AI push, investments, and opportunities.

Also Read: What They Said: Preeti Lobana of Google India on AI

What They Said: Timeline

October 2025:

During TCS’s financial results announcement for the second quarter of fiscal year FY 2026, which ended on September 30, 2025, K. Krithivasan said:

“In response to economic and demand volatility, clients are consolidating vendors to achieve transformation objectives effectively and efficiently. We are finding good success in many such large deals using our differentiated, AI-infused solutions.”

He added:

“The mega deal with Tryg Insurance is a good example of how we scale long-standing partnerships with our contextual knowledge, unmatched delivery track record, and leadership in AI.”

He continued:

“In the last few quarters, we have undertaken many internal and external transformation initiatives to accelerate the adoption of AI within TCS and our clients. We have been engaging with our clients in understanding the challenges they are facing in scaling AI and collaborating with technology partners and academia to unlock the true potential of this technology.”

He said this experience gives TCS the confidence to state that it will become the world’s largest AI-led technology services company, enabling business, government, and society.

This transformation, he said, is currently underway.

The CEO stated that the company is committed to making significant investments toward transformation, focused on five pillars:

TCS AI – Internal transformation to drive an AI-first culture, build AI solutions, and scale AI for connected intelligence.
Redefining all Services in a Human + AI services model – TCS has established an AI and Services Transformation Unit for this purpose.
Building A Future ready talent model – Investing in future-ready skills, embracing new ways of working, and recruiting top talent locally in the markets where TCS operates.
Making AI real for clients – Redesigning business value chains across industries and investing in the development of innovative, cross-industry AI-driven solutions.
AI Ecosystem Play – Deepening partnerships across the AI ecosystem, stepping up M&A efforts, and foraying into new business ventures. This includes the previously announced press release on ListEngage and the creation of a new AI infrastructure entity in India.

Krithivasan said:

“We are deepening our participation in the AI ecosystem by expanding into adjacencies. We are creating world-class AI infrastructure for all stakeholders, including enterprises, hyperscalers, and sovereign requirements.”

He added:

“Earlier this year, we announced the launch of TCS SovereignSecure Cloud. We are seeing very good traction for the same in our client base in India.”

He also highlighted TCS’s partnership with IBM and the Government of Andhra Pradesh:

“In partnership with IBM and the Government of Andhra Pradesh, we are deploying India’s largest Quantum computer in the country’s first Quantum Valley Tech Park.”

On AI-led transformation, Krithivasan said:

“Our belief and confidence in becoming the largest AI-led services company is based on the strength of the existing client relationships. And the partnerships that we are building with all the players in this ecosystem. And we expect every project that we do will be AI-led.

“So, which means that we’ll be offering speed, we’ll be offering flexibility and there could be productivity gains also in these projects, but we’ll also be doing projects that could not have been done without AI in the past.”

“Our expectation is overall scope of engagement or size of engagements would definitely increase. But there would be productivity benefits that the clients would get in the individual projects. And we also will get some productivity benefits from doing these projects because we’ll be leveraging AI.”

On what prompted the company’s data centre investment, he said:

“The most important thing is our calculation of unmet demand; that’s going to be in the data center space. Our calculation shows that we have only 1.2 gigawatt of capacity in the country. And in the next five to six years, the demand can go up by almost 10 times, whereas the committed capacity is only about 5 to 6 gigawatts. So that is going to leave so much unmet demand. So, with all these things put together, we thought it’s a good opportunity for us. And another point is it also guarantees stable annuity revenue as well.”

On the AI data centre investment, he clarified that it is a passive data centre:

“The likely users could be the hyperscalers, deep tech, who want to do the training, inferencing in India or Indian enterprises, they want to leverage it as a private cloud. We are not expecting our overseas customers to be hosted, specifically in India. It’s more like what we are offering for these hyperscalers and India-based businesses or deep tech.”

On GenAI and AI-led application development, he said:

“…Many of our customers globally have a lot of technology debt that they have carried over the years.”

He added:

“GenAI and Agentic AI are powerful tools to really address the tech debt. You can use these AI, GenAI to understand the legacy code and forward-engineer and deliver the new code. So, modernization with AI is a huge opportunity, and we are seeing a significant uptick across customers, but I would say right now, significantly in BFSI. And we expect to replicate this across other verticals.”

He concluded the earnings call by highlighting:

“Our TCV was robust, at USD 10 billion in Q2, which grew 16 percent YoY, including a mega deal win, using AI-enabled differentiated solutions.”

He added that TCS will continue to be a key jobs provider in the industry.

Also Read: What They Said: Vijay Shekhar Sharma of One 97 Communications, Paytm on AI

December 2025:

TCS Analyst Day 2025

Speaking at TCS Analyst Day 2025, December 17, 2025, Krithivasan said:

“What we are seeing today is a new technology in terms of generative AI. Of course, it’s a misnomer to call it just a technology. This is a fundamental shift. It’s very different from previous technological disruptions we have because of the scale with which its going to impact, and the speed at which it will occur, and the benefits we can deliver from it. In fact, for these reasons, our chairman has called it a civilizational shift.”

He added:

“We’ve been doing many projects like since 2023, when the ChatGPT moment happened. We’ve been working with our customers, helping them do POC, exploring, experimentation. So many things have been happening by now. We have done more than 5,500 projects.”

Krithivasan said:

“Our AI-related services have garnered a total revenue of USD 1.5 billion annualised. About 54 of the top 60 clients use TCS for AI. 85 percent of all clients, greater than 20 million, leverage TCS for their AI work. Based on the success we’ve been able to get in the market from our customers, our QoQ growth on AI alone has gone up by 16.3 percent.”

This marked the first time TCS reported its AI revenue, reflecting its growing ambitions to become the world’s largest AI-led technology services company.

He said:

“A massive internal transformation exercise is going on, and we are encouraging all our associates to adopt an AI-first culture. Every time we take on a project or engage with a customer, the first question we ask is: What can AI do here? Can AI do this better than what we are doing today, even if it ends up cannibalising our own revenue?”

“That is what we define as an AI-first culture, giving AI the first right of refusal before considering any other option. Alongside this, we are building our own AI solutions and scaling them,” he said at the TCS Analyst Day 2025 in Mumbai.

Krithivasan noted that TCS has executed more than 5,500 AI projects and completed 209 platform deployments, achieving customer satisfaction of 94.8 percent. This, he said, shows AI is now being implemented at enterprise scale rather than treated as an emerging capability.

TCS has navigated several technology shifts over its history, from mainframes to client-server computing and the rise of the internet. Krithivasan noted that generative AI represents a more profound inflection point because of the speed and breadth of change it is driving across industries. Unlike earlier transitions, he said, AI is reshaping not just tools but how work itself is organised and delivered.

Krithivasan said the company follows an “AI-first” approach internally, treating itself as a “customer zero” and asking whether AI can perform tasks better.

He also outlined a full-stack ambition, with TCS operating across the value chain from infrastructure and chip design to models, platforms and AI agents. This breadth, he said, combined with financial strength and execution discipline, positions the company to lead clients through the transition.

Krithivasan said all customer-facing teams are trained in AI, and more than 180,000 associates have been upskilled in advanced AI competencies.

He emphasised that TCS’s customer context, deep customer relationships, the experience it has built, the investment, the strategy the management aims to put in, and the strategy they have, makes it poised to be the “world’s largest AI-led tech services company.”

“In fact, we feel that we are destined to be there,” he said.

About

K. Krithivasan, also known as Krithi, took over as the CEO and MD of Tata Consultancy Services on June 1, 2023. He joined TCS in 1989 as an assistant system analyst. According to the company profile, as CEO, Krithi sharpened the multinational company’s focus on industries by realigning the organisational structure into key business groups. He has steered TCS’ strategy for creating the world’s largest AI-ready workforce.

This is a developing story, and more quotes and insights from K Krithivasan will be added as they become available.

Also About TCS:

Also Read: IBM, TCS Partner to Deploy India’s Largest Quantum Computer in Quantum Valley Tech Park in AP

Also Read: TCS Plans USD 6–7 Billion for AI Infrastructure

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