“The current wave represents a deeper structural change than any previous technology cycle, and every conversation today is an AI conversation,” Aarthi Subramanian, executive direc-tor, president and chief opera-ting officer, said in an interview.
The transformation is being driven by a closely aligned leadership team, with chief executive officer K Krithivasan setting the vision for TCS to become the world’s largest AI-led tech-nology services company. Tata Sons reappointed Subramanian as COO in April 2025 as the India’s largest software developer navigates a significant pivot towards AI. Prior to this role, she was chief digital officer at Tata Sons and earlier worked at TCS as global head of delivery excellence, governance and compliance.
Over the last two fiscal years, TCS has posted modest growth, hit by geopolitical uncertainties and AI-led disruption, though it crossed the $30 billion revenue milestone in FY25. In the last six months, the company has taken several radical steps, including laying off 2% of its workforce, or about 12,000 employees, entering the data centre segment and completing its first acquisition in nearly a decade.
Subramanian said Krithivasan is shaping both the customer and employee value propositions while defining what the company’s future operating model must look like in an AI-native world. Along with Subramanian and chief strategy officer Mangesh Sathe, TCS has appointed Amit Kapoor as chief AI and services transformation officer, reporting to her, to sharpen its focus on large-scale delivery.
“We are deliberately creating significant leadership bandwidth because this is an era of unprecedented change. That depth at the senior management level is critical to driving transformation at scale, with Krithi leading the charge,” she said, describing her long working relationship with Krithivasan as a partnership built on trust and close collaboration.
Artificial intelligence is also forcing a rethink of the traditional IT services model itself. TCS has introduced a five-level autonomy framework across its service lines to help customers move from automation to autonomy, where a growing share of human tasks is executed by AI. While this shift may replace certain roles, Subramanian said overall demand for newer use cases will continue to expand. As a result, TCS has not scaled down its hiring, even as it took the decision to let go of employees. The transition involved workforce restructuring, including selective layoffs, largely at senior and mid-level roles no longer aligned with future requirements.
Net additions
“TCS continues to add talent on a net basis, with around 19,000 net additions in the most recent quarter, and said exits were handled with extreme empathy and respect,” especially long-tenured employees, she said, underscoring the company’s intent to balance “transformation with human sensitivity.”
The framework is being applied across application development, testing, infrastructure, enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation and business processes, allowing TCS to assess client maturity, define roadmaps and proactively share productivity gains. This, in turn, is helping the company expand scope with existing clients and win new deals.
The company has rolled out an internal programme, TCS to the Power AI, aimed at rewiring organisational culture and ensuring that each of its more than 600,000 employees becomes an AI practitioner rather than merely AI-aware. This has involved expanding access to multiple foundational models, hyperscaler tools and coding assistants. The company recently concluded what it called the world’s largest AI hackathon, with 280,000 employees participating and over 500,000 ideas and builds submitted.
TCS has also introduced weekly AI Fridays at physical AI labs at its centres, where cross-functional teams build solutions through time-bound sprints. Subramanian said this approach is flattening hierarchies and accelerating learning at scale. The number of employees with advanced AI capabilities has more than doubled over the past year to around 180,000.
Alongside cultural change, TCS is positioning itself as a live reference case for AI-led transformation. Internal IT, HR, finance, learning, procurement and legal functions are being redesigned using AI-first solutions, with a sharper focus on productivity and return on investment. “TCS must look and feel like the future we are selling to customers,” Subramanian said.
Engagement model
To accelerate client adoption, TCS has formalised a three-step engagement mode—innovate with AI, build with AI and scale with AI — combining immersive CXO workshops, rapid-build prototypes delivered in hours and full-scale deployments completed in weeks.
Underlying the entire strategy is an ambition to position TCS as an end-to-end AI player, spanning data centre infrastructure, platforms and intelligent agents. This includes deeper partnerships with hyperscalers, enterprise software firms and AI-native companies, selective acquisitions and new ventures such as its data centre entity.
“Our play is — infrastructure to intelligence,” Subramanian said. “This is the moment to fire up all cylinders,” she said.
