KkAI Agents Reshape SaaS and Services: Insights from India’s Tech Leaders

Top executives from India’s IT giants gathered at the India AI Impact Summit to debate whether artificial intelligence agents are upending the software-as-a-service model and services industry. Moderated by Amitabh Kant, the panel featured Salil Parekh of Infosys, K.
Krithivasan of Tata Consultancy Services, C. Vijayakumar of HCL Technologies, and
Arundhati Bhattacharya of Salesforce India.
Bhattacharya dismissed market hype, warning against reading too much into stock dips.
“Markets will say a lot of things, and not all of it comes true,” she said. SaaS success lies
beyond code generation—in workflows, customer pain points, governance, auditability, and
adoption. AI evolves how work happens, but enduring value comes from solving real
problems.
Krithivasan foresaw engineers shifting to high-level architecture and validation amid AI
productivity surges. Enterprises need data cleanup and app modernization first. Far from
contraction, he predicted expansion: “We don’t envision a shrinking of the sector, but rather
a massive explosion in the volume of what can be produced and the complexity of the
problems we can solve.”
Vijayakumar noted that foundational models fall short for enterprises, lacking efficiency in
specialized use cases. HCL builds intellectual property in physical AI and agentic AI to close
this gap, proactively adapting business lines for scaled adoption.
Parekh highlighted a $300 billion services opportunity, making the “impossible” feasible—such as legacy modernization via orchestration platforms that blend foundation models with agents to deliver business value.
The consensus: AI agents transform models without instant obsolescence. Agility, enterprise prep, orchestration, and customer focus will define winners in complex digital landscapes.