India is banking on artificial intelligence to generate new opportunities that can offset job losses from automation, even as AI tools begin to replace thousands of positions in call centres and customer service sectors long seen as pillars of the country’s outsourcing economy.
Automation begins to reshape traditional industries
AI-driven platforms are rapidly transforming India’s vast service sector, particularly in customer support and back-office operations. Companies are increasingly adopting conversational AI tools capable of handling complex queries once managed by human agents.
Start-ups such as LimeChat report that AI-powered chat systems now handle up to 70% of customer interactions for major e-commerce and fintech firms. “AI agents allow businesses to scale while reducing headcount,” said LimeChat co-founder Nikhil Gupta. “The shift is inevitable—but it also opens up entirely new categories of work around AI training, oversight, and deployment.”
According to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), up to 30% of entry-level roles in India’s IT-enabled services could be automated within five years. Yet policymakers and industry leaders remain optimistic that the wave of disruption will ultimately expand employment in emerging digital fields.
Government and industry pivot to AI upskilling
The Indian government has launched several initiatives to prepare the workforce for an AI-driven economy, including partnerships with technology firms and universities to provide training in data science, machine learning, and generative AI tools.
Training centres across Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Pune—once focused on coding and customer management—are rapidly shifting their curricula to cover prompt engineering, AI ethics, and automation design. “We’re seeing unprecedented demand for AI-related skills,” said a senior instructor at NIIT. “The students who once trained to become call-centre agents now want to learn how to train and manage AI systems.”
Balancing innovation and social impact
Despite optimism about long-term benefits, labour economists warn that the transition could widen inequality in the short term. Millions of workers employed in routine or voice-based roles face displacement before sufficient new positions emerge. The challenge, experts say, will be ensuring that reskilling efforts reach lower-income and rural populations, where digital access remains uneven.
Still, the broader consensus within India’s tech sector is that embracing AI early will position the country as a global hub for AI services, similar to how it became a centre for software development in the early 2000s.
India’s evolving digital workforce
As companies integrate AI across sectors—from finance and logistics to education and healthcare—the emphasis is shifting from cost efficiency to innovation capacity. Industry analysts estimate that by 2030, AI-related jobs in India could number in the millions, ranging from model training and data labelling to algorithm auditing and applied research.
For now, the country’s bet is clear: that human ingenuity, aided by machine intelligence, will ultimately create more opportunities than it replaces.
Newshub Editorial in Asia – 15 October 2025
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