The rise of Gen AI has pushed the global technology sector into a period of rapid change, raising questions about how IT companies will evolve, how workplaces will adapt, and how quickly enterprises will absorb new tools.

These themes took centre stage during a panel discussion at Fortune India’s Best CEOs 2025 awards ceremony in Mumbai, where Sandeep Kalra, CEO of Persistent Systems Ltd, and C. Vijayakumar, managing director & CEO of HCL Technologies Ltd, explored the speed of adoption, the confusion around new technologies, and how businesses should prepare for the next decade.

“I think the leaders across the IT industry are very well appreciative of the potential of AI to not only transform their services, but also the clients and their businesses," said Vijayakumar during the interaction on ‘The Future of IT Companies in the Gen AI Age’. Explaining the typical tech adoption cycle, he said, “You will start seeing this rapidly speeding up from here on. We’re almost in the third year.”

Persistent's Kalra described the current moment as the early phase of a long expansion. “I think it will really accelerate… People understand the potential right from tech companies, how they deliver products, how the products can be used in an enterprise.” Pointing out that companies are still preparing their data foundations, he said, “For the next 5-7 years, you will see much more being adopted.”

The conversation soon shifted to concerns about job losses. Vijayakumar addressed this directly, saying, “There’s a lot of effort to use generative AI to amplify or enhance what the human capabilities are…[in] customer support, marketing, content creation, software development, data, decision-making systems.” He stressed that the biggest impact will be across functions rather than industries.

Kalra agreed and tried to ease the sense of threat. “It’s not AI replacing humans. It’s AI enabling humans to do much more, much faster," he said. Highlighting the huge potential in sectors like pharmaceuticals and financial services, he said, “Use cases are humongous, and it’s also a spawning of newer markets.”

When asked how much enterprise clients understand agentic systems, Vijayakumar said the market is energetic but confused. He explained, “Awareness is high, but there is also a lot of ambiguity… Sometimes, people mistake what can be done effectively through traditional AI and believe that needs to be done through Gen AI.” He said clearer use cases are emerging and added, “There are some very good use cases which are getting into deployment, and we will see the scale.”

Kalra described how IT service firms help clients navigate the noise. He said, “It’s about looking at a customer, customer’s business, and their customer… We don’t need to necessarily have a Gen AI use case everywhere.” He stressed the need for deep context and added, “We need to go business by business and see where it can have meaningful use case.”

The panel also discussed recent collaborations with hyperscalers and chip companies. Vijayakumar said such alliances are essential. He explained, “We need to have an end-to-end capability… from silicon to cognitive infrastructure, to data, the model, applications, and then the business process.” He said this helps firms make the intelligence layer relevant for enterprises because “We understand the enterprise context.”

Kalra noted that the technology world is now too large for any one company to cover alone. He said, “We have to be the guardian from the customer side… figure out what is the best technology at the best price point.” He added that Persistent uses a mix of its own platforms and external capabilities, saying, “It’s about having a bouquet of capabilities.”

On the future of IT talent, Kalra said the industry is entering a phase of reinvention. He explained, “It gives us all a new pivot to reinvent ourselves… the biggest investment we are doing is about training, learning, development.” He said future teams will include more people from other domains and added, “We need to have people who have been there, done it in a different context.”

Vijayakumar agreed and highlighted the importance of intellectual property. He said, “The need to invest in IP is of paramount relevance… software engineers will also have to manage agents.” He predicted that teams will become more self-managed as roles evolve.

Kalra offered simple advice to CEOs. He said, “We should not start from technology, we should start from business.” Vijayakumar ended with a reminder: “Everyone should think of their business in an AI-now mindset… and focus on making your people AI ready.”

The awards event was held at Trident, Nariman Point in Mumbai.