NITI Aayog AI Report: Researching the Future of India's IT Services Sector

Akhil took on this research brief when Goldman Sachs's India CEO was serving on a government committee contributing to the NITI Aayog's report on AI's impact on the job market through 2035. The central question was whether AI represented an extinction-level threat to India's IT services sector, which had historically been built on cost arbitrage through Indian talent on dollar-linked projects.

Akhil led the research effort, pulling from multiple sources. He reviewed reports from Bessemer Venture Partners and other institutional research, and reached out directly to major IT services firms including Accenture, Capgemini, and TCS to understand how they were positioning themselves in response to AI. He also coordinated with external firms including Deloitte and EY, who were working on the broader NITI Aayog report.

The finding that emerged was more nuanced than the threat framing suggested. While AI would automate a significant portion of traditional IT services work, most firms lacked the internal capability to deploy, manage, and maintain AI systems at scale. That gap pointed to a new service category: AI-backed services, where IT firms would shift from delivering labor-arbitrage outputs to managing and operating AI systems on behalf of clients.

The conclusion reframed the narrative from sector extinction to sector transformation. The output was a structured research report presented to the Finance Minister of India, showing what the evidence supported about AI's impact on Indian IT employment and where the sector's next growth surface was likely to emerge.