Beyond just chats: Indian tech majors start bagging deals in GenAI space

• TCS and HCL Tech said that they have over a 100 genAI opportunities in the pipeline.
• They also won a few projects, most of which are in the proof-of-concept or pilot stages.
• Tech companies said they built large-scale genAI capabilities, and are ready to take on projects.
  

Less than a year after ChatGPT was launched, Indian tech majors have started bagging generative AI projects. Even in times when demand is slow, discretionary spends are elusive, the new-age technology is bringing work as well as excitement into the IT outsourcing market.

Although the size of the deals is small at the moment, genAI has ‘captured the imagination’ of clients, say top executives of Indian IT companies. TCS and HCL Tech said that most of their genAI projects are proof-of-concept or pilot stages.

“Deal sizes are small and are mostly under $1 million where clients are trying them out. But there is potential to convert a part of our Jaguar Land Rover with AI and ML capabilities,” said N Ganapathy Subramaniam, COO of TCS at the company’s Q2 earnings press conference.

HCL Tech’s MD C Vijayakumar too shared that most of the genAI deals they are bagging are either half a million or sub-$1 million deals. But they are currently working on a hundred such opportunities.

“We have been selected as a partner by this very large software major for their product testing and sustenance efforts. We are providing GenAI on a private language model to improve resolution rate and speed efficiency,” said Vijayakumar.

Infosys CEO Salil Parekh also shared that they are working on some proprietary large language models (LLMs). “AI is a part of almost every deal we do. And, GenAI is getting there. As it expands and more and larger enterprises get into it, it will be very exciting,” he added.

A catalog of AI opportunities

A few months back, all tech majors announced big moves in the generative AI space. Wipro announced that it will spend as much as $1 billion over three years to build capabilities. TCS, HCL Tech partnered with software major NVIDIA to skill their employees.

As of September end, TCS said that they have 100,000-strong GenAI-ready workforce. They said they also have as many as 250 Gen AI opportunities in the pipeline. “When we started generative AI, they were all about knowledge discovery. As clients understand more, the genAI is getting more complicated. We are now working for a co-pilot for a financial advisor on what advice to give clients, help underwriting policies,” explaining K Krithivasan, CEO of TCS.

TCS said that it has identified opportunities across various verticals, identified use cases and cataloged them per vertical. With that it says that it’s planning to go and engage with clients and have conversations on the same.

“With this, we can have conversations with our clients – be in CRM or payments space and wealth advisory and other use cases,” explained Ganapathy.

HCL Tech too is working on use cases related to banking and financial sector. “We signed a generative AI deal with a to improve their risk and compliance efforts – which is a very big effort in financial services. There are a lot of transactions happening on this front, and we have discussed how we can help,” said Vijayakumar.

The buzz for cost optimization and automation deals has gone up in the last few months. Clients are looking to ramp down their expenses and intend to use tech to help with their overall cost reduction efforts. As automation gains ground, AI and ML will find more use cases – and most tech companies are confident that a little of it can spill into the new and emerging area of GenAI as well.