Every major Indian IT firm wants to be seen as an AI company. But so far, only one of them has reported how much money it makes from AI. HCLTech put a number—$100 million—on its advanced AI business this quarter. The rest are still talking about platforms, copilots, and agents, and “delivering AI right”.
The difference seems simple. While HCLTech is treating AI as business, others are either using it as branding or are still underconfident about integrating AI.
In the July–September quarter, all major IT firms—TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Tech Mahindra, LTIMindtree—talked about AI more than revenue. Yet, revenue barely moved. Infosys grew 2.3% sequentially, LTIMindtree grew 2.4% and Wipro 2%. While TCS’ revenue was flat and fell year-on-year, Tech Mahindra is still crawling back from last year’s collapse.
Despite this, AI dominated every earnings call.
Another Case of AI Washing?
Indian IT seems to be hopping onto the agentic AI bandwagon lately. From weak Q4 FY25 to barely better Q2 FY26 results, leading players have been quick to claim that AI is now integral to every client conversation and all major deals. But this seems to be a case of agentic washing more than anything else.
Apoorv Iyer, global head of GenAI practice at HCLTech, had earlier told AIM that there is a possibility of agentic and AI washing in Indian IT and calling out separate revenue streams is difficult. “I would say a lot of firms started to be early in reporting AI revenue, but there was a lot of AI washing happening in this space,” he added. “The real truth is that AI is everywhere—in every deal, every pipeline.”
Iyer said that calculating revenue from AI is similar to how firms were tracking cloud revenue five years ago. “Today, everything is cloud [revenue]. AI is likely to follow a similar path. Almost all deals now include AI enablement and AI solutioning. Distinguishing what constitutes AI revenue and what does not is vague,” he said.
Cut to today, HCLTech is the only firm declaring AI revenue, except for Sonata Software reporting 20% of its revenue will be delivered through AI in the next three years.
Coming to Infosys, it spent much of its Q2 call repeating how Infosys Topaz is being adopted by hundreds of clients and how the company is the AI trusted partner for many companies. CEO Salil Parekh said that the firm would reveal the AI revenue when “the right time comes.”
Wipro unveiled Wipro Intelligence as its unified AI suite with 200+ AI agents for its clients. Though announcements about its agents were made before this quarter, the revenue impact was not revealed by the firm.
LTIMindtree highlighted its BlueVerse ecosystem and Tech Mahindra talked about sovereign LLMs of 1 trillion parameters with IndiaAI Mission. Both are making an impact for clients, but the exact details might be revealed later.
TCS is investing $6–7 billion in AI data centres, positioning itself as a global infrastructure player. This is a plan for five years and analysts predict that the company’s immediate revenue and profitability might take a hit due to this.
None of them, apart from HCLTech, quantified what their AI achievements meant for the bottom line. That disclosure exposed a gap the others are now struggling to cover.
Infosys has been the loudest about AI adoption—claiming 300 use cases under Topaz. But when analysts asked about revenue, the company ducked the question. Wipro’s new AI identity came with a slick tagline: “Intelligence is the new growth,” but not a single financial metric. TCS and LTIMindtree both used the phrase “AI at scale” multiple times, but neither backed it with data.
A Case for Persistence
Persistent Systems, a mid-sized player with far less hype, has reported 22 straight quarters of growth. It doesn’t sell fancy AI platforms. It doesn’t run marketing campaigns. It just keeps delivering.
Persistent’s growth exposes what the larger firms are missing. They are obsessed with owning the “AI narrative” instead of owning the work. Persistent isn’t pretending to reinvent itself as an AI-first company, it’s already integrating AI where it makes sense. That’s what clients are paying for.
The company reported 22nd consecutive quarterly growth with a 24% jump in revenue this time and net profit jumping 45.1% year-on-year. The company aims to generate $2 billion in revenue for FY27 and it is banking on AI, BFSI, and healthcare for it.
CEO Sandeep Kalra said the company’s AI strategy is built on a platform-led model that combines domain expertise, proprietary tools, and partnerships to help enterprises modernise operations and accelerate measurable outcomes.
Despite the last quarter being a muted one for deals, the company has gained traction in Q2FY26, aiding revenue visibility. The trailing 12-month TCV finally rose 15% YoY to $609 million. Given the robust deal pipeline and strong execution seen so far, the company might just be on track for its $2 billion goal.
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