Fireside chat · 2:55 to 3:20 PM · Wednesday, May 13, 2026
So welcome Amit. This has been some conversation today. But I have a lot of tough questions for you Amit. By the way can you hear me? You can? Okay. So, Amit, what do you do at Wipro? Let's start with that.
Well, I've got two jobs. One is, of course, to work with our clients to transform their business, you know, as we're experiencing this disruption. So how do they transform themselves? Personally, I focus on supply chain, but the team focuses on the larger industry and functional agenda. And the second job is help and transform Wipro as a company. Company which is, what, 75 plus years, inherited in the root of IT and technology services, changing that, transforming that business. So two things going on at the same time.
So you are one of the largest services company and the world of consulting, we've spent half a day today. It's changing in some form or fashion. How is it changing? Do you think the IT services world, the consulting world is still fit for purpose?
Look, I mean, there is disruption. Okay, and, you know, the way AI has disrupted the industry right now, it's almost like a wake-up call. Things are moving from a technology perspective faster than we anticipated. It's matured a lot. Consulting as an industry is going through one of those once in a 20-year paradigm shift, I should say that. And for the good. I think it's moving it up the value chain a little bit more. AI will do the routine jobs that it's supposed to do, research work, elementary work, process work, etc. And it will mature and become commoditized. What will still be essential in all of this as AI matures is the adoption bit, the process bit. For that, you still need people who understand criticality, can make judgment calls, who understand process from an industry lens perspective, functional lens perspective, who can drive the adoption in human beings. At the end of the day, AI is an accelerator. That's how you should see it. It's not the thing. Yes, it does a lot of things faster, gives you options. And in that, picking up the options, selecting the right outcome is where you need human beings to be in the mix. And, you know, the role of consulting and IT services, I think, will still prevail. It's a little bit more matured because you need that experience of working across the industry. What does consulting services do? You know, we work with clients across industry, across the world, you know, and that experience and knowledge is something that will be, you know, very important as things mature. So, yes, there's disruption. Yes, there is chaos a little bit, but I think things will settle down. And the IT services and consulting services will exist in a different sort of shape and form. The commercial value proposition, the ways of working will change. So you're bullish? Still bullish, absolutely. And that point is validated by the recent last one week announcements, et cetera, from some of the model company, if you will.
Yeah, so tell me about that, right? So Anthropic is now launching its own consulting gig. OpenAI, TPG is funding OpenAI to create its own consulting thing. So on one hand, we are seeing consulting is dead, long-lived consulting kind of conversations. There's this doom. On the other hand, everybody's getting into consulting. So how do you understand this?
Look, it's, you know, the fact that they've launched advisory services just validates the fact that you still need consulting and services industry to exist. The models will mature. It will give you the options. The value is not in the models. Models will get commoditized. Right now you have Anthropic, you have Gemini, all of these three or four companies driving that model wave. I think as things ramp up and AI matures, everybody will start creating their own models. So the value is not in the models. The value is in that inherent knowledge of systems, processes, adoption, people understanding what this means and making that critical judgment. And it just validates the fact that you still need IT services, consulting services, human beings in the loop. And that's where, you know, that's the reason why they are going down that path. It just reinforces the fact that, you know, this industry is bullish.
So is Anthropic a friend of Wipro, an enemy of Wipro, a frenemy?
I mean, Anthropic is one another company in the ecosystem. I should say this. As things mature, clients, and you started to see this, they're looking for outcomes. And in that outcome that we're looking to deliver, it'll not be one provider who'll win the race. It'll not be consulting services, it'll not be hyperscale, it'll not be the model company. We need to bring everything together. And in that model, when we have our role is to bring everybody together to our clients to solve a problem and deliver outcome, anyone, whether it's Anthropic or OpenAI, Gemini, Microsoft, they're all friends. We have to bring them together. At the end of it, everything will boil down to client-centricity, the value that business is expected to deliver. The only change is clients are expecting this value to be delivered faster. And in that model, each of these companies brings different unique capabilities. So everybody's a friend. Our role is to bring it together to our clients' problem.
Yeah, okay. So we coined this term called Services-as-Software, I keep saying last year, but it's 2026 now, so it's more than a year. And the idea was the lines between services and software are blurry, right? Like we were just discussing, you know, Anthropic is getting into consulting and Wipro is launching, you know, your Wipro intelligence and your new platform organization. So do you believe in this Services-as-Software paradigm? Do you think it's real and what's?
Look, I'll go back to the earlier comment, which is what AI has done is brought in speed. It has changed the mindset of our clients to say, deliver me outcomes. And deliver me outcomes meaning that there are few things that they'll expect to be done at speed, at pace, and at table stakes. In that, the platform bit of it, where you need repeatable workflows, is essential. And that's where Services-as-Software comes into play. But the part around critical judgment, adoption, human being in the loop, that will still exist. So my read on this is software will accelerate the way consulting services are delivered. It does not take away the human aspect of this industry is not going to go away. So Services-as-Software, yes, it will support and enable, but it will only accelerate the outcome that you're trying to deliver. That's how it is. But again, look, we're in a paradigm shift here. The industry's in the flux. Don't have a crystal glass to gaze and say how things will be, but that's my point of view right now. So my daughter is 13 years old. Should I say consulting is a career option? Absolutely. Absolutely. It's one of the best career right now. It's one of the best career, I'm telling you, because the opportunity to see this disruption on a large scale across continents, across countries, across industries, across function, that experience is absolutely invaluable.
Yeah. So I also heard this thing within Wipro where you're sort of integrating the BPO business with the consulting business. My assumption is to create sort of a one Wipro kind of an experience. But everybody, you know, all your peers, they do everything from strategy to execution. What does this thing by bringing these two groups together, the operations group and the consulting group, really mean for a client? Can you give us an on-the-ground experience?
Look, many companies, including my past company, talks about it. I think for all the clients in the room, you would understand that the way transformation is done or was being done was consulting advisory would come and shape the agenda. Technology will implement systems. There'll be groups and operations who will do the process. There'll be chain management group who will do the adoption. There'll be data group who's doing data part of it. And client was left to bring it all together. And I think things fell between the cracks. What we did in Wipro was bring BPO and consulting together so that, one, there's end-to-end accountability. The knowledge that sits in our BPO organization for all of our clients, the process knowledge is absolutely important as AI sort of matures because that process knowledge is going to help us tell what should work in this AI-enabled work and what should not work, how should we reimagine the process. So what we've done is integrated the accountability. So from a client's perspective, one face, end-to-end accountability, whether it is implementing systems or running the process or change adoption, it's one face, one Wipro. And this is something that we started in November so we were probably one of the first ones to do this in the industry, I think we announced it in January and now we're taking it a step further, we're saying not only it's about selling solutioning, delivering a process engagement and transformation engagement, it applies to every aspect of our business so engineering, technology, the go to market, the facing off with the client is one face, holistic end-to-end, nothing falls between the crack, nothing certainly falls when it gets to execution and delivery time. That's the change we made.
So, basically, tell me if I'm understanding this right, Amit, is basically you're bringing together all the Wipro capabilities across the Wipro universe into a single throat to choke?
So from a client perspective, this engineering, BPO, technology, consulting is internal to us. A client has to experience Wipro seamlessly. They shouldn't care about which organization are we pulling the teams and capability for. I think that paradigm exists for our own internal sake saying talent strategy is different, career progression, all of that is different across different entities. But from a client perspective, it's one face, one accountability, which is to solve the problem and deliver outcome.
And, you know, talking about client problems, Amit, we've been talking about these debts a lot today. All kinds of debt. You know, I came into this room today with people debt, process debt, tech debt, data debt. Atul added imagination debt. We added leadership debt. I'm sure if we go around this room, there will be 10 more debts that we'll add. And we did a little poll today, Amit. I don't know if you were there or not. And we said, which one is important? Everybody said all of the above. Yep. So how the hell do you solve this?
Look, this is where the maturity of AI comes into play. What AI has done is it has exposed all vulnerabilities across all dimensions of our business, whether it's tech, process, people, data, leadership, all of that imagination. It's on the table, right? The thing that we need to do is prioritize. Which one do you address, how do you sequence is more important than addressing everything. It is not about, you know, the thing that we need to reflect back is are we implementing AI across the board? Do we want AI everywhere or do we want AI to deliver value? I think the answer lies in we need AI to deliver value. So let's look at all the debts, put it on two, you know, typical consulting framework, two by two grid, you know, which is where are the biggest pain point and where are the biggest value? Plot them on and for each organization that two by two of where's the value and where's the friction will be very different and then you get to a small subset on the top right quadrant of that, pick those up, focus on those and execute. Now in all of this, the third dimension which is not on this is the adoption, the change management, the adoption. So that's the third dimension that we need to keep. Whichever debt you are trying to address, the third dimension is extremely important, which is, you know, how do you make sure that it sticks, it adopts, you know, it becomes pervasive in the organization.
I can visualize a bubble chart now. The other thing, Amit, before you jumped in, we were discussing outcome-based pricing. Yep. And everybody's talking about, you know, we want outcomes and all that. And ever since I was a young kid, I was told there's something called outcome-based pricing. Yep. And it's been 30 years, and I still think there's something called outcome-based pricing. So what is this outcome-based pricing, and how do we get there? Is it a myth?
It's a myth, right? And I'll tell you why. When you engage consulting firms, there's always an outcome that you're expecting to deliver, right? How do you price that outcome? There's a tangible part of it, and there's an intangible part of it. On the tangible, which is financials, it boils down to trust and working out the same data set. That, you know, and oftentimes, you know, getting to that integrated baseline, integrated outcome numbers and all of that is a challenge. Right now, what AI has done is it's accelerated, saying, I want outcome. Nothing has changed. I want outcome faster, cheaper, better. And so what this will bring is a maturity and a recognition that we need to define baseline better, the data quality will become important. Working out of same data sets will become important. Now keep in mind, our procurement clients, procurement organization, and people who work with us in contracting also need to evolve to this model. There is a difference between the expectation from the business to deliver outcome to a procurement organization saying, I'll accept this, and then you bring in a dimension of trust, saying what is the common state of data that you work with? So it will move towards that dimension. You know, AI is going to force that change a little bit faster. It may not take 30 more years, but it's certainly not going to happen in the next 30 months. You know, that is a process. And that process will go through. Now, at the end state, once data has matured, AI has matured, there's transparency in the process, maybe you'll get to that where you have a common baseline, you define that, and that is the paradigm in which you will get to gain shared kind of construct. It's a journey. It's a journey that has been on for 30 years. It'll probably be on for another two, three years. Are you signing outcome-based contracts? We have been always signing out. Again, I'm going back. It is which part of the outcome? The tangible part? Yes. The intangible? It's a very great thing. If you've redesigned process. Now, bring in agents in the loop. How do you price agents? It's a math that people still need to figure out, saying how do you price human and AI working together and orchestrating together to deliver outcome? Right now, the conversation is we should price agents. I bet you in a few months, a year down the line, it'll become table stakes. Say it's part of doing business. So again, in the flux that we're in, a lot of things will evolve. And evolve for the good. I think the outcome-based pricing is the right thing to do. The P times Q thing, which is labor and headcount-based staffing, sort of should not exist. But we're not there yet. It's a journey that will take some more time. Systems, process, governance, human adoption, all of that matures. We'll get there. But that's the journey we're on.
Yeah. So talking about journeys, I'm assuming it's very different to lead a consulting organization today than even, whatever, two, three years ago. How has your leadership style changed? What are you doing differently as an individual now, Amit? What have you learned or unlearned?
A lot of things. I think, you know, we talked about it in Davos as well. You know, one of the things, and for this audience, I'll repeat, you know, I have two learning coaches. One who is, you know, at a direct line reporting, who talks to me, him or her, in terms of what business and where business is headed in terms of, because of AI disruption. And the second learning coach is at the bottom of the pyramid. And there is a big wide gap between what the bottom of the pyramid thinks about in business disruption to what top of the pyramid thinks about it and it is on us to bring it all together. I think that's one thing. So understanding, looking at it from two different perspectives and I've not brought client into it because that will become a little bit of a challenge but within the organization, I think I've got that one. Second is I've stopped using AI as a research tool like a Google. It's become more and more part of day-to-day working. And I'll tell you, I have everything from Claude to Gemini to, you know, ChatGPT to whatever exists out there. Okay? And it is, you know, using that for different purposes. If I am looking at ecosystem thing, I look at Gemini. If I'm looking at, you know, research, I go to Claude. And so making that as part of the day-to-day, and the latest thing that I'm most fascinated about is the Microsoft Copilot. When you have to look at the process workflow within the organization, that's pretty matured. So I think looking at that, making it your habit, I think I realized a few months into this disruption that this is not a technological change. So I think getting that out of my mind that this is not a search engine and this is not a technological change, it's an operating model shift. It is about redesigning processes of the company. I think that is something that came really quickly, and which also meant that as I'm getting into this role more and more, as running a consulting business, you know, the shift has been more towards how does the future workforce look like? What is the governance going to look like? How does policy need to change? And how do you do compensation differently? So the conversation and the thinking in the leadership team has dramatically shifted to saying AI is in the mix. How do we use this to drive client value, to improve employee value proposition, and drive adoption? So a lot of change is going on.
I really like the point of having coaches at the junior level, and I'll give you my story. I created an awesome dashboard on Excel spreadsheet, which I was so happy and impressed by myself. It actually automatically populated data. I was very happy with it. I had used Claude to develop it as well. And I was presenting it to a client, you know, gung-ho, confident. I really nailed the world. And there was a 20-year-old or 25-year-old girl on that thing. She used that dashboard and converted it into some web, ching-jang thing, right on the call. And I was super impressed and embarrassed at the same time. But that's what's happening right now. And if we don't learn and think that our Excel dashboards are the best, then we're going to be nowhere, I guess.
Look, we have to be willing to unlearn things. You know, like in consulting services, unlearning the fact that it's number of people times the price point per day is how revenues, and the more people you have in your practice, the more the revenue is. I think decoupling that is an important thing. Looking at the role changing from building capability, et cetera, to look at how AI will work. What's the governance mechanism? How do you institutionalize this? It's a lot of change going on. And so we need to be willing to unlearn. Get out into the, you know, get out of your comfort zone. I think that's an important bit. And I think one of the things that I've learned is use these tools on your day-to-day work. You know, make yourself comfortable. Use AI tool not to do like research. You can use it for mundane work as well, but use it to challenge your thinking. The amount of knowledge that they bring, you know, intellect knowledge, now some of them is hallucination, keep that in mind, but again, you need that critical judgment to say what is wrong and what is right, but using them as a challenger to refine your thinking, I think it'll help a lot.
Yeah. No, it's a fantastic conversation. Any questions?
Yeah, first of all, good luck on your journey with Wipro. I'm an ex-Wiproite. Okay. I'm the biggest unit there for a while. The very interesting thing I noted from you, what you just said, right? This conversation about converging, consulting, and everything as the one single face of the company. Sure. I can assure you it's been going on since the beginning of the century, actually, right? I started my career in a pure consulting company. There were no contradictions. It was very clear I dealt with a certain set of buyers, and selling to them was very clear. They were not easy buyers, but I knew what I was dealing with. I came into Infosys at that time to help set up business consulting in Infosys. And that's where the problem starts, right? Because when you are dealing with traditional outsourcing and business consulting services, the buyer set is entirely different. In fact, I want to say that the company that was actually most successful not even bothering with consulting was TCS, by the way. And they said, we don't want to confuse our buyers. We get our bread and butter from outsourcing. What the hell are we going and talking to them about consulting and how much money is that going to bring? So I think that problem hasn't inherently gone away. That is the biggest issue. What you're saying is absolutely right. It should not be a fragmented service. But this myth has been going on for the last 26 years, at least I can tell you that. And how do you get around that?
Look, one, instead of talking, we have done it. So instead of talking about it, we have executed this. So that's one. I think we brought it together. The market has responded very positively about it. Our internal organization is still coming together. It's going to be a journey. But I think from a client perspective, we're seeing a lot of green shoots in terms of conversation getting changed. The buyer set itself has changed. So one of the things we have deliberately been doing as AI, the spend pool of the discrete independent expenditures has gone beyond the CIO to the CXOs. So it's Chief Supply Chain Officer, Chief Human Resources Officer, CFO. So we've pivoted the conversation saying we will not wait for RFPs. We will seed ideas, we'll walk the hallways, work with the non-CIO CXOs very deliberately, and create opportunities by, you know, working with them. And that's a very different conversation. And there, the question around is not about, you know, RFP coming and CIO and whoever coming to play. It's about working with enterprise functions, and we've deliberately focused on four. Let's focus on finance, HR, supply chain, you know, and marketing, sales and marketing. And work with the CMOs and the business holders to drive it down. So that's the journey we're on. Again, early days, we announced this externally in January. The signs for the market, from our analysts community, all of that is very positive. So I'm bullish about this agenda because it truly differentiates us in the market and clients appreciate one face and therefore integrate solutioning and delivery.
It's been a fantastic conversation. Amit, Joel is giving me the looks now, which means we need to get going. But thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you.
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