Indian IT needs to reinvent itself for the age of automation and artificial intelligence

By Vivek Wadhwa "Carnage in Indian IT," read a headline about retrenchments in its outsourcing industry as markets stagnate and US visa restrictions erode profits. The Indian IT industry generates $150 billion in revenue but is facing an existential crisis largely of its own making because it became complacent and overconfident even as technologies and markets changed. It can survive only if it exits the business that brought it success and reinvents itself. India's outsourcing boomed during the Y2K crisis of the late '90s because there was an urgency in repairing corporate IT systems. Once chief information officers (CIOs) became comfortable with having their systems maintained across the globe, they started outsourcing large-scale projects to Indian companies, and billion-dollar contracts were announced almost every week. But with the advent of tablets and smartphones and their applications in the 2010s, users gained access to better technology than the companies' IT departments could provide.