If you want to know the state of AI in Indian IT, ignore the noise. The platforms, the agent counts, the trillion-parameter LLM announcements matter far less than the numbers.
And the numbers tell a story most executives don’t want to hear: the firms shouting the loudest about AI are often the least confident in their results. Meanwhile, the quiet, consistent performers are quietly reshaping the landscape.
Take Persistent Systems. The mid-tier firm rarely makes headlines, yet in Q2 FY26 it posted a 45% YoY jump in net profit, 23.6% revenue growth, and 22 consecutive quarters of growth. Total Contract Value reached $609.2 million, up from $520.8 million in Q1.
Then the revenue per employee (RPE) is also up 58.2% since FY22, putting it nearly on par with top tier giants like Infosys and HCLTech.
No Flashy Announcements
Mid-tier firms like Persistent execute, deliver measurable outcomes, and scale steadily. Its AI strategy combines domain expertise, proprietary tools like SASVA 3.0, and client-focused automation—execution that converts deals into revenue.
The company aims to reach $2 billion revenue by FY27. Vinit Teredesai, CFO at Persistent Systems, told CNBC, “As we get to the $2 billion journey by FY27 we want to improve our operating margins by 200 to 300 basis points.”
According to Sanchit Vir Gogia of Greyhound Research, the rise of Persistent Systems is not a coincidence. “This isn’t luck or timing. Persistent’s growth is a case study in staying power,” he said. At a time when every IT company is trying to rebrand itself around AI, Persistent is letting its results talk.
“Under Sandeep Kalra’s leadership, the company has kept its positioning grounded in business outcomes, not buzzwords,” Gogia said.
Same goes for Coforge which is set to announce its Q2 results this week. In Q1, it became the 7th largest IT firm with profits doubling. Coforge is building platforms like AgentSphere, a library of over 100 AI agents targeting pain points in travel, BFSI, and healthcare.
Compare these two to the Big Five. Wipro’s Intelligence platform, Infosys’ AI agents, TCS’ $6 billion AI data centres, Tech Mahindra’s sovereign LLMs—all impressive, but the revenue and RPE signal is often missing.
TCS posted its first-ever annual revenue decline for a Q2. Wipro grew just 2%, despite $2.9 billion in large deal bookings. Infosys, despite claiming hundreds of AI projects and agents, hasn’t disclosed AI revenue.
Tech Mahindra’s net profit fell 4.4% YoY. HCLTech is the only one putting a number on AI revenue—$100 million, or about 3% of total revenue.
Smaller, focused companies like Persistent can grow faster because even single large deals represent a bigger slice of revenue. For giant IT firms, similar deals barely move the needle.
Gaurav Vasu from UnearthInsight said, “The size of some of their deals itself will be equivalent to Persistent.” For a billion-dollar company, a 10% growth would translate to $100 million of net revenue, he added
Focus on Specific Verticals
Top tier firms have learned to decouple revenue growth from headcount. They embed automation, platforms, and IP to scale programs without proportionally expanding teams. Infosys and HCLTech are delivering double-digit RPE growth even as operating margins remain under pressure.
Persistent stays focused on a few verticals and a select set of top clients. This concentrated approach allows deep penetration of accounts and effective delivery of AI-enabled solutions, unlike large IT firms whose attention is spread across dozens of verticals and hundreds of clients.
“The difference is not capability, it’s posture,” Gogia added. “Persistent doesn’t need to call itself an AI company to prove it’s using AI. It’s already delivering through it.”
Mid-tier firms often grow revenue through manpower. LTIMindtree, Coforge, Hexaware, Mphasis—all added staff to support growth in Q1 FY26 and are expected to do the same in Q2. They win smaller deals, but RPE gains remain capped without IP monetisation or scalable automation.
Coforge and LTIMindtree are following a similar path, but Persistent remains the outlier in efficiency and per-employee revenue.
Persistent did not make flashy announcements. Vasu said, “The management may believe that it is not important for them. It is a management that focuses on outcome based, saying I will consistently outperform.”
Gogia agreed with the observation as he said that the top tier firms are busy rearchitecting their delivery models and retraining massive workforces. “Persistent, on the other hand, is signing new deals and expanding margins. It’s not ignoring AI—it’s just not making AI the centrepiece.”
Clients notice. Global CIOs still gravitate to top tier firms for multi-year, AI-enabled transformation contracts because these firms deliver measurable per-employee value. Mid-tier players are agile and responsive, but the perception that they are extensions of the client workforce, not creators of value, persists.
The contrast is clear. Top-tier firms dominate headlines with AI announcements, but the market values results, not rhetoric. Indian IT needs more of Persistent’s kind, not prophets. Those shouting loudest about AI may dominate news cycles today, but the quiet, persistent performers are the ones shaping the next chapter of Indian IT.
The post Indian IT Needs a Persistent, Not a Prophet appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.
