In India, the IT business is usually the primary sector folks consider when considerations about AI’s impact on jobs are raised. That is largely as a result of Indian IT companies give attention to service-based fashions relatively than product creation, which means they don’t have a tendency to rent top-tier expertise for coding and software program engineering. Consequently, engineering jobs in these firms face the best danger of being changed by AI.
In all of their newest earnings calls, IT giants like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech, and Tech Mahindra revealed they’re constructing AI capabilities for his or her purchasers, which embrace small language fashions and agentic AI. It’d seem to be there have to be a big expertise pool inside these companies that may construct such capabilities and know the way to code. In actuality, nonetheless, that’s not the case.
A number of earlier studies revealed that the majority Indian engineers have no idea the way to do fundamental programming. One report, particularly, indicated that solely 5.5% of complete engineers are certified with fundamental information of coding. Now, with AI coding instruments like Cursor and others within the image, the case for engineers is prone to worsen.
Whereas chatting with AIM at MLDS 2025, Tanay Pratap, YouTuber and founding father of Invact Metaversity, confused that AI coding instruments and brokers arising out there may threaten Indian IT workers.
“Indian IT providers don’t code,” Pratap stated. “Thirty years of IT revolution within the nation, however we nonetheless don’t know the way to produce coders at scale.” He added that even when graduates come out of universities with a pc science diploma in India and be a part of IT companies, their means to code nonetheless stays questionable.
What’s the Menace?
With the rise of AI instruments, the demand for hardcore builders who can write code is predicted to extend as properly. A number of business consultants like Yann LeCun, François Chollet, and Sam Altman have stated that as AI begins to put in writing higher code, there shall be a better demand for builders who can evaluate and in addition write higher code.
Nonetheless, Indian IT engineers are usually not incentivised sufficient to be coders. “Individuals will all the time need extra automation,” Pratap stated whereas giving the instance of how there’s all the time demand for extra merchandise, just like the rise of 10-minute supply apps in India. “We didn’t know we would have liked them but it surely was undoubtedly helpful.”
Presently, the largest exporter in India that contributes to the economic system is the IT service firms. Nonetheless, as an alternative of getting coders and programmers, these IT providers assist and testing-related roles. “The entire enterprise mannequin [of Indian IT] is about exporting providers like testing to world prospects,” Pratap additional stated.
Citing an instance from his time at Microsoft, he revealed that the corporate used to outsource whole product testing to an IT agency in India earlier than deploying the product. Nonetheless, with the rise of AI instruments, the group in India that dealt with the testing would now be in danger, as Microsoft may quickly be capable of do the identical with the assistance of AI instruments.
“That’s the largest risk to the Indian economic system since that’s the largest service we offer,” Pratap stated.
The Must Evolve
Regardless of producing round 5 to 10 million STEM graduates yearly, India, as a populated and growing nation, is working out of expert software program engineers who know the way to code. Nonetheless, the onus falls not simply on the engineers but in addition on the incentives that these companies provide for the candidates to study coding.
Whereas India’s startup ecosystem is discussing constructing one thing foundational to problem ChatGPT or China’s DeepSeek, Indian IT appears to stay unaffected by this. The entire concept of those companies is to proceed offering providers for his or her purchasers, which must evolve with time as coding is getting automated to a big extent.
This additionally raises the problem of upskilling at these Indian IT companies. Though efforts are made to upskill workers with generative AI, most of it revolves round coaching them on the way to use AI instruments as an alternative of studying to code from scratch.
Arguably, graduates and engineers prepared to affix IT companies for the comparatively decrease salaries they provide additionally lack the willingness to study coding. In the event that they did, they might go for choices that pay excessive even inside the nation.
Subsequently, it seems more and more doubtless that AI coding brokers will problem programmers in Indian IT companies. That is very true for the reason that duties they at present carry out might be simply dealt with internally by their current purchasers with the assistance of AI instruments. Consequently, the demand for outsourced programming work could wane.
The submit AI Coding Might Be Indian IT Engineers’ Greatest Menace appeared first on Analytics India Journal.
