Davos 2026: Indian IT is not lagging in AI, says Wipro chairman Rishad Premji

Wipro executive chairman Rishad Premji with Moneycontrol's Chandra R Srikanth at WEF 2026 in Davos.

• Indian IT firms are moving quickly on AI, says Wipro Chairman Rishad Premji
• AI adoption is moving to mainstream production but is still in early stages.
• AI fluency will drive higher salaries and reshape IT hiring and business models

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Wipro executive chairman Rishad Premji has said Indian IT services companies are moving fast enough on artificial intelligence (AI) and are not behind the curve, even as client conversations shift from experimentation to real deployments.

“The broader question of whether Indian IT is moving fast enough and disruptively enough in changing and accommodating and participating, my submission is yes,” Premji told Moneycontrol at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on January 21. “Look, I think we are moving fast enough.”

The WEF, which has brought together nearly 3,000 leaders from more than 130 countries, including 400 top political leaders and 850 CEOs, ends January 23.

Premji’s comments come at a time when large IT services companies are trying to position AI not as a threat to their core business models but as a technological shift that can expand opportunities across advisory, data, models and delivery at scale.

Many IT CEOs, including HCLTech CEO C Vijayakumar and Infosys CEO Salil Parekh, have called for an overhaul in IT business models amid AI disruption.

“Look, I think Indian IT is clever. It realises the models are pivoting. They want to participate,” he said. “They’re also recognising that you have to disrupt yourself in some areas because you can do the work you do currently differently, more impactfully, more productively,” Premji added.

Reacting to job and revenue deflation concerns due to AI, he said the transition does not necessarily mean less revenue or fewer people. “It just means a redistribution of what you’re doing,” he said.

From pilots to production, but still early days

Premji said customers are increasingly moving beyond proof-of-concept projects, with more AI adoption happening in a mainstream and production setting.

“I think clearly the mindset has moved from pilotisation to more and more of adopting it (AI) on a production basis,” he said.

Premji did add that AI adoption is still in its early stages for many enterprises, largely limited to simpler tasks. “I think it’s still very much a journey. It’s very much focussed on low-end tasks, easier tasks, functional tasks, as it permeates into the business as well,” he said.

Data, context remain the real bottlenecks

Successful AI adoption is tied to enterprise readiness, particularly around data and workflow context. “The other realisation is that customers have to have their data well curated, well organised,” he said.

“There has to be a deep understanding of the models, of the context, of the domain, of the specific workflow, and having that embedded value can be generated and realised for the organisation,” Premji added.

Bigger opportunity for services companies

Premji said the complexity of the AI journey creates a broad opportunity for services firms to guide and execute adoption.

“And so that creates huge opportunities actually for services companies, all the way from helping a customer in terms of advising them on their journey of AI, helping them actually curate data, helping them leverage the curated data to fine-tune the models, helping identify the use cases,” he said.

Wipro has been leveraging the platforms that it has built for use cases, to fine-tune AI models, to build out the agentic AI, to manage the use cases, to orchestrate it and to deliver it continuously, Premji said.

Also read: Clients have learnt to operate amid geopolitical uncertainty; it’s the new normal: HCLTech’s C Vijayakumar

AI could reshape hiring, pricing, and talent premiums

Premji said the traditional linear model linking revenue growth to headcount could change over time, as customers push for different commercial outcomes.

“The linearity could change because the expectation of what the commercial models can look like could look different,” he said. “I think there will be more and more outcome-based models.” There will be “more and more value-creation models as opposed to purely time and material and people-based models”.

He also said AI fluency will increasingly become a key currency for the workforce. “I certainly think salaries for people who are much more AI fluent will increase and increase substantively,” Premji said.