Industry Odisha Bureau, Oct 23: TCS, HCLTech, Wipro and Tech Mahindra are moving into AI advisory. They now guide clients on models, costs and workflows. Whether clients will pay premium consulting fees remains unclear.
India’s IT majors are looking beyond backend operations towards AI strategy advice. TCS, HCLTech, Wipro and Tech Mahindra now advise clients on deploying AI. Their advice covers model selection, headcount utilisation and ways to cut AI costs.
For decades, these firms mainly built and managed software systems for clients. Growing AI adoption and falling usage costs are now opening new opportunities.
AI consulting differs from AI implementation. Consultants help clients decide what to build and why. Implementation teams then build, integrate and run those systems.
TCS, India’s largest IT services firm, is focusing on AI cost advice. Chief operating officer Aarthi Subramanian outlined the approach on an 8 October earnings call. TCS helps clients manage token costs through benchmarking, model choice and FinOps advisory. Tokens are units of text that AI models process and bill for. FinOps is the practice of managing cloud and technology spending.
TCS is also using process mining to map clients’ existing workflows. This helps identify where AI agents could take on tasks.
HCLTech chief executive C. Vijayakumar said AI advisory was gaining traction. Such work lets the firm engage clients early in their AI journey. It can then extend into redesigning operating models and managing organisational change. Its advanced AI revenue rose 28.4% sequentially to $219 million in the September quarter. The figure covers advanced AI broadly, not consulting alone.
Wipro credited many recent deal wins to its consulting-led approach. Chief executive Srini Pallia cited a modernisation deal with an unnamed global financial institution. Wipro also secured a large financial-sector deal through Capco, a London-based consultancy. It bought Capco in 2021 for $1.45 billion. AI-led consulting is a key service line within its Reimagine AI offering.
Tech Mahindra offered a more mixed picture. Chief executive Mohit Joshi said consulting and experience design had been relatively weaker. He added that both businesses remain in growth mode. Chief operating officer Atul Soneja said clients must better understand AI token economics. The firm now prices tokens alongside AI agents and human oversight.
September-quarter revenue stood at $7.64 billion for TCS and $3.72 billion for HCLTech. Wipro reported $2.61 billion, while Tech Mahindra posted $1.69 billion. None of these firms discloses consulting revenue separately.
Accenture began as a consultancy, and consulting forms roughly half its $74 billion revenue. Indian firms are now following its lead.
Experts say Indian firms long avoided scaling consulting for structural reasons. Phil Fersht of HFS Research said the industry was built on labour arbitrage. Labour arbitrage means profiting from lower-cost skilled workers delivering large volumes of work. Advisory work, he noted, sat with the Big Four, Accenture and McKinsey. Peter Bendor-Samuel of Everest Group said Indian firms preferred long managed-services contracts. Consulting engagements, by contrast, tend to be short.
Fersht said the key question is whether these firms can build a premium advisory brand. Otherwise, AI-native players could capture that upstream role instead. Success will depend on turning credible advice into lasting business.
