Movers & Shakers
Indian IT Firms See AI Deals Move from Experiments to Large-Scale Projects, Says Wipro CEO
2026-01-21
Indian software services providers are competing for technology deals increasingly underpinned by artificial intelligence as companies move from AI test deployments to large projects, Wipro CEO Srini Pallia said.
As budget constraints loosen, Wipro is bidding for several small AI deals alongside large- and mega-deals, Pallia said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, without providing details.
"We'll go after both (small and large deals) because different clients, different industries, and different markets are at different maturity stages," he said.
Pallia acknowledged intense pricing pressure as AI compresses delivery timelines and team sizes but predicted there will be more small deals due to AI adoption.
India's IT sector, which represents about $283 billion in annual revenue, was hit for several quarters by corporate cuts to technology spending as clients focused only on essential or cost-cutting initiatives amid geopolitical turmoil and macroeconomic uncertainties.
Enterprise AI spending is moving from experimentation to accountability, and Wipro offers both AI consulting and IT services for this transition, Pallia said.
"For our clients, 2025 was more about deploying AI, proof of concepts, and bringing productivity benefits. That's dramatically changing in 2026 because the boards and the CEOs are asking them where the return on investment is," he said.
Pallia does not expect technology budgets to increase dramatically but said clients are optimizing spending and adopting cost-saving technologies.
AI-assisted software development will cost about 25% less, with significant productivity gains in coding and testing, he said. That will translate to "new and more projects, (and is) why IT budgets are not going to shrink in the long run."
Wipro launched a three-year plan in 2023 to invest $1 billion to advance its AI capabilities.
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