India's 1.5 million annual IT graduates face an industry that's moving on without them
A Bloomberg report reveals how agentic AI is shaking up India's massive IT industry. Companies like Infosys are spending weeks retraining new hires because the country's universities aren't keeping up with reality.
A detailed Bloomberg Businessweek report looks at how autonomous AI tools are hitting India's $315 billion IT services industry. According to the report, the release of better AI models and new agentic AI tools triggered a "Software-Mageddon" this spring that wiped out roughly $800 billion in market value in a single week. India's Nifty IT Index dropped nearly 20 percent, its biggest decline since the 2008 financial crisis.
For companies like Infosys, TCS, and Wipro, which built their businesses over decades on a billable-hours model powered by low-cost programmers, AI-driven autonomous coding poses a fundamental threat. Infosys Chairman Nandan Nilekani told investors that this technology shift is dramatically different from anything the industry has faced before, according to Bloomberg. A McKinsey report estimates that around 30 percent of work hours in India could be automated by 2030. TCS has already cut 12,000 jobs worldwide.
Universities aren't preparing graduates for the AI era
India produces more than 1.5 million computer science graduates every year. But according to a 2025 Mercer-Mettl study, only 42.6 percent of them are job-ready. AI barely shows up in many curricula. Infosys has responded with an overhauled training program: 19 to 23 weeks covering 45 technology stacks, including agentic AI.
When it comes to hiring, a candidate's digital footprint on platforms like GitHub and Hugging Face now matters more than university prestige. Infosys HR chief Sushanth Tharappan told Bloomberg it's "pure Darwinism" - not the strongest who survive, but those who adapt the fastest.
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