India’s largest IT company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS),
India’s largest IT company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has sparked major discussion after its workforce declined by nearly 20,000 employees in a single quarter. According to company data, the employee count dropped from about 613,000 to 593,314 during FY 2025–26 Q2. While TCS has described this as “workforce restructuring” due to skill mismatch and changing business needs, the employee union NITES has alleged that the real scale of layoffs is larger than what the company has officially indicated. TCS maintains that the changes are not directly because of AI replacing jobs, but because certain employees could not be redeployed into new technology-driven roles.
The issue is significant because TCS is not only India’s largest IT services company but also one of the country’s biggest private employers. In FY 2024–25, the company reported revenue of approximately ₹2.41 lakh crore. In India, TCS has long been viewed as offering stability comparable to a government job, with strong job security and career growth. Therefore, a workforce reduction at this scale has broader implications for the entire IT sector. While companies like Infosys and Wipro have also conducted layoffs in the past, TCS’s size and brand reputation make its restructuring more impactful and widely discussed.
Experts point to three main reasons behind the workforce reduction: skill mismatch, the growing influence of AI and automation, and cost optimization. TCS has reportedly provided basic AI training to hundreds of thousands of employees and advanced training to many others, yet redeploying mid- to senior-level employees into newer tech-heavy roles has proven challenging. AI and automation are increasingly handling repetitive and rule-based tasks such as data entry, manual testing, basic coding, and customer support, which traditionally employed a large number of mid-level IT workers. Some analysts also cite global economic slowdown and stricter U.S. visa policies as contributing factors.
According to the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2023 report, around 50 percent of employees worldwide may require reskilling by 2027 due to technological disruption. Similarly, industry reports suggest that by the end of 2025, a significant portion of global IT jobs could be impacted by AI and automation. The key takeaway is that the primary risk is not AI alone, but the failure to adapt. Professionals who upgrade their skills in AI, machine learning, data analytics, and cloud technologies are likely to find new opportunities even as traditional roles evolve.
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