Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani | Photo Credit: PTI/KUNAL PATIL

Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani on Tuesday dismissed fears that artificial intelligence would wipe out jobs in India’s IT services sector as “hogwash” and “disaster marketing to suit the interests of large capital”, saying demand for such firms is higher than ever.

Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum 2026, Nilekani responded to IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva’s description of AI as a “slow-moving tsunami” that could wipe out demand for many workers by taking over routine tasks.

“I think this is all disaster marketing to suit the interests of large capital. The fact of the matter is that the requirement for companies like Infosys or others is actually more than ever before because the transformation of enterprise is a very complex activity and AI requires you to fundamentally reimagine the way you do business. It's a root-and-branch surgery that is required," he said.

Nilekani said AI would require firms like Infosys to show companies how to carry out such transformations.

“I think we are going to see only more work coming our way,” he said. He added that companies would have to transform themselves, reskill their workers, and build new capabilities.

“The capacity of AI technology is far ahead of its deployment,” Nilekani said.

He pointed out that cloud computing was invented 20 years ago and still isn't ubiquitous because companies take years to adopt technology and must deal with legacy systems, change management, and power structures.

Nilekani said traditional coding work was being automated by AI coding agents and would become much more productive, but business transformation was not just about coding.

“In any technology project, technology is only 30 per cent; 70 per cent is governance, change management, transformation, guardrails. How do you make sure your AI bots don’t hallucinate? How do you make sure your agents don’t go rogue? These are the things to worry about,” he pointed out.

New jobs would come from understanding client requirements, collaborating, and getting people to work together, he said. Asked about pricing pressure on Indian IT companies' shares this year, Nilekani said, “Markets will have their own view on this.”

He said technology adoption takes time, noting that Aadhaar, which he helped build, took seven to eight years to reach a billion people.

Nilekani also said small businesses would drive job creation in India. Firms with three to five employees do a range of complex tasks that cannot be automated, he said, describing these as “AI-proof jobs”.

"Once India unleashes its small business economy, millions of small companies will hire a couple of people each. And that's how the jobs will happen. So we'll see a new way of job creation enabled by open networks and AI, which is a paradigm we are not seeing; therefore we can’t visualise it.”

Published on October 13, 2026