Indian IT will remain a low-volatility, moderate-return business over next 5 years: Sanjoy Bhattacharyya

Fortuna Capital partner says AI will reshape the industry, but adoption will take time

Indian IT services companies are likely to remain a low-volatility, moderate-return business over the next five years, even as the industry navigates a transition driven by AI, said Sanjoy Bhattacharyya, partner at Fortuna Capital on the sidelines of Moneycontrol's Global Wealth Summit 2026 - second edition.

Bhattacharyya said the current excitement around AI is significant but may be running ahead of actual adoption. “There's too much hype around AI right now. Yes, it's going to have a profound impact on our lives. This is one of the great things in terms of technological innovation. Post the internet, I think this is probably, you know, a great thing. It's like the steam engine,” Bhattacharyya said.

While the impact will be large, he cautioned that it will not materialise immediately. Bhattacharyya explained that widespread adoption depends on companies building applications that make AI usable at scale. Drawing a parallel with the evolution of the internet, he said new technologies only gain mass adoption once practical applications emerge.

“The internet, Tim Berners-Lee discovered it in the early 80s, mid 80s. But when did the internet take off? When you had applications. The same with AI. When you can use AI productively for your benefit on a large scale, then AI will have significant impact.”

According to Bhattacharyya, Indian IT services companies are already aware that the technology could reshape their business models.

“Now, the Indian IT services companies, most of them are run by pretty smart people. And so they know that their future has been dramatically changed. So they need to do something about it and they need to figure out how they get on the right side of AI. So you're going to see a bunch of different strategies in place. Some will align with global majors. Some will change the way that they sell products or sell their services to enterprises. Some will themselves think about data centers and participating through that route,” he said.

While growth may slow during the transition period, he said the sector remains structurally relevant. “The growth will slow for a short period at least, in the period of transition. But it's far from dead. Indian IT services will continue to be a business and it's all a function of what your return expectations are and the kind of volatility, for want of a better word, that you want to take," he added.