CEO Parekh Foresees No Layoffs In Infosys Due To New-Age Tech

Generative AI is evoking strong interest from clients and there is a huge mobilisation of GenAI within Infosys as well, CEO Salil Parekh has said, asserting that he does not foresee any layoffs in his company on account of these new-age technologies.

On the $3.9-billion GST tax demand, Parekh said Infosys has already given out updates and made disclosures in the market (through BSE filing) and has no further update to share.

"We have no new update. The status is as it was in terms of what we shared externally a few days ago," Parekh said when asked if the company will be making provisions for the same, given the demand in back taxes dating back several years.

In an interview to PTI, Parekh said there is a huge reception from clients on Generative AI and likened it to the adoption curve seen for digital and cloud technologies in the past.

Parekh believes GenAI adoption will increase with time as enterprises experience the benefits and business outcomes arising from it.

"So we think this will accelerate as time goes on but we will wait-and-watch how it develops. It is a bit like, some years ago we started with digital or with cloud... these things start-off in a certain way... and then we see what benefits clients are getting. If they see benefits are substantial, more and more adoption will happen," he said.

It is pertinent to mention that Infosys — like its Indian and global peers — has been strengthening its AI play.

Infosys, earlier this year, had said it is working on 225 Generative AI programs for clients, and that over 2,50,000 employees have been trained in the areas of generative AI.

Parekh does not expect the advent of GenAI to lead to any layoffs in the company. Even for businesses overall, GenAI is addressing newer areas, say by finetuning credit analysis that may allow a bank to broaden its product offering, bringing new revenue opportunity and productivity benefits.

"So, at this stage, my sense is that the technology will help business to grow even further as opposed to anything else. We don't see any layoffs in Infosys with these new-age technologies, and in fact, we continue to increase our recruiting as the economic environment changes... as you saw in Q1 we had a strong growth quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year, we have a very good large deals win number. And with that we increased our guidance.

"So we see growth slowly coming back," Parekh pointed out.

Parekh noted that Gen AI has become "very critical" and that clients are looking at ways to leverage large language models for business benefits in areas ranging from software development to customer services. Infosys is seeing substantial benefits that clients can achieve on this, according to him.

"The third area is when clients have knowledge-objects whether it is in, say a bank's credit department, in a manufacturing company in product elements, or what products to use, or in a telco in, say, pricing of their programmes...anywhere there are knowledge elements and objects and ways to leverage them in more efficiently... generative AI becomes very useful," Parekh said.

Infosys does not offer a specific break-up of revenue coming in from Generative AI work. Parekh further said there has been a huge mobilisation for Generative AI within Infosys, which is focused on making itself an AI-first entity.

Infosys has invested in and scaled its digital reskilling program globally to include the latest courses on generative AI, and its latest annual report points out that today the company's platforms are also enhanced with generative AI aspects.

Infosys' bets on GenAI comes at a time when generative artificial intelligence's meteoric rise globally has spurred excitement.

As per Deloitte technology trends 2024 report released in April this year, GenAI is revolutionising operations and enhancing customer experiences across sectors such as healthcare, retail, education, and agriculture.

India's GenAI market is projected to achieve a compound annual growth rate of over 24.4% from 2023 to 2030, according to the Deloitte report, which also notes that is India poised to emerge as a global leader in AI innovation, leveraging GenAI to drive inclusive progress and sustainable development.

As such, companies cutting across various industries, are today keen to use generative AI tools to solve business challenges, automate repetitive tasks, customise and personalise customer interactions, squeezing more out of sales and marketing efforts, code generation, and enhancing enterprise and organisational efficiencies.

In fact, Infosys Chairman Nandan Nilekani in Infosys' latest annual report penned a note on 'What's next for the generative AI revolution' where the industry veteran emphasised that gen AI revolution presents an 'unrivaled opportunity', and that the flux of change with the whole technological landscape being reset, will create many large openings.

"We are into the second year of the generative AI revolution, and some clarity is beginning to emerge from the noise and babble of the last 18 months. The initial hyperventilation of AI 'doomerism' and the risk of human extinction by AI advances like Artificial General Intelligence has quietened down," Nilekani wrote in the Infosys annual report.

At present, Infosys' work in AI and generative AI is available to its clients through Infosys Topaz.

The Bengaluru-headquartered company is working on several client projects in software engineering, process optimisation, customer support, advisory services, as well as sales and marketing.