NEW DELHI: India’s IT services sector must pivot decisively to stay ahead in the AI era, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday, amid concerns in the sector related to generative AI tools such as Anthropic’s Claude, which recently triggered stock dips in firms like TCS, Infosys and other IT firms.“If we are looking at becoming a major AI player, a major player in the future of tech… we have to reimagine ourselves. There’s no way we can live in the past. We have to quickly reorient, accept the future, adopt it,” Goyal said, adding, “India’s IT industry will continue to thrive despite disruption.”Goyal also said AI should be seen as an enabler rather than a threat. “AI will support us in our world. I’m not worried about job losses. We train, retrain, we reskill. I’m confident we’ll add jobs in this. But if we don’t stay alert and active, then we could start losing,” he said, adding that alongside AI adoption, companies must strengthen cybersecurity and data governance.Goyal urged industry to seize opportunities in cloud, data centres and applied AI rather than worry about long-term large language model development. He called for attracting global investments into India instead of sending talent overseas. “Bring investments to India, create jobs here, skill our people and keep that talent here… we’ll create some IP here.”
