TCS calls generative AI a “civilisational shift”

Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran, who also chairs the TCS board, said the USD 30 billion IT services company will create a "large pool" of AI agents to work alongside humans and deliver solutions in a "human+AI" model in the future

Mumbai: India’s largest IT services company, TCS, believes that generative artificial intelligence (AI) is not just another tech cycle but a “civilisational shift” which will positively benefit every industry.

Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran, who also chairs the TCS board, said the USD 30 billion IT services company will create a “large pool” of AI agents to work alongside humans and deliver solutions in a “human+AI” model in the future.

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“Achieving near-human reasoning capabilities, GenAI is not just another tech cycle, it is a civilisational shift,” Chandrasekaran wrote in his message to the company’s shareholders in the annual report published late on Tuesday.

He said TCS has been proactive in using AI technologies and has infused AI across its offerings. It has also built intelligent agent solutions throughout the value chain.

The company, which is also the largest private sector employer with over 6.07 lakh people on its rolls as of March 2025, will have the largest AI-trained workforce in 2025 and has also launched an enterprise-grade Gen AI platform christened ‘TCS Wisdomnext’, Chandrasekaran said.

“Looking ahead, we plan four distinct progressions. First, we establish a large pool of AI agents working alongside our human workforce. Second, we deliver solutions through a human+AI model,” he said.

TCS will also invest in AI data centres and cloud infrastructure, and forge partnerships with hardware providers, solution innovators, and startups, he added. The company’s Chief Executive and Managing Director K Krithivasan said clients are increasingly shifting focus from a use case-based approach to return on investment-led scaling of AI, and TCS is helping them set up AI centres of excellence, AI labs and by providing domain-specific AI solutions for business operations with over 150 AI agents, among others.

“The appointments of Aarthi Subramanian as the President and Chief Operating Officer, and Mangesh Sathe as our new Chief Strategy Officer, announced earlier, are driven by the industry shifts led by AI,” he added.

The company chairman cited specific cases where TCS has helped clients on the Gen AI front, including developing a drug discovery solution that created over 1,300 molecules for a concept target and then assessed synthesisability and shortlisted 12 molecules undergoing in vitro testing.

It can be noted that the last two years since the onset of the Gen AI have seen a slowdown in workforce additions or a fall in staffing by IT companies, who attribute the change to automation and also higher staff additions in the Covid years.

TCS executives have maintained that AI will not have a detrimental impact on jobs, but the nature of jobs will undergo a shift. Chandrasekaran also said that the ongoing shifts in geopolitics and the emergence of a multipolar world are having an impact on businesses, and added that businesses faced “significant shocks” in FY25, ranging from falling production volumes and rising costs to suboptimal asset utilisation, which impacted profitability and cash flows.

Krithivasan also informed shareholders about the business performance in FY25, where the company notched up new deals of USD 39.4 billion, including work for European retailer Primark and Xerox.

The company’s revenue grew 6 per cent on year to Rs 2.55 lakh crore, and the operating margins came at 24.3 per cent. The TCS scrip had closed 1.11 per cent down at Rs 3,498.90 a piece on the BSE on Tuesday, as against a 0.76 per cent correction on the benchmark.