“The Sholay days of ‘Kitne Aadmi The’ for the Indian IT sector are over,” quipped CP Gurnani, former CEO of Tech Mahindra, in a recent interview. His statement sums up a shift underway in the industry–a move away from valuing manpower to valuing outcomes, driven by AI.
This change is vividly portrayed by Genpact, a global technology and consulting firm. Like most enterprises, Genpact is in the early stages of its agentic AI journey and is strategically aligning its business model. The company is transitioning from a traditional full-time equivalent (FTE) model, where clients are billed based on the number of people assigned to a project, to a service-oriented, outcome-focused approach.
This new model leverages agentic AI to deliver results, fundamentally changing how value is created and measured.
The shift is not happening in a vacuum. It reflects broader industry trends, exemplified by moves at tech giants like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). Against the backdrop of AI driver transformation, TCS is reportedly planning to reduce its workforce by 2% by 2026, impacting nearly 12,000 jobs primarily at the middle and senior levels.
The company has stated it is undergoing a significant overhaul that includes strategic initiatives in new markets and the large-scale deployment of AI for its clients, signalling that efficiency and tech-led delivery are now paramount.
The philosophy behind this industry-wide change was articulated by Gurnani in his interview with CNBC. “I think all of us will have to rewire ourselves to start looking at output- and outcome-based business models, outcome-based pricing,” Gurnani said.
“More importantly, looking at what it does for the business or what it does for the customer’s customer, instead of looking at IT and systems in isolation.”
Industry analysts are putting a name to this new paradigm. Saurabh Gupta, president of research and advisory services at HFS Research, calls it “Services-as-Software (SaS).”
He had earlier described it as a transformative model where delivering outcomes no longer depends on traditional, manpower-intensive services but is driven primarily by advanced technology, reducing human intervention and maximising efficiency.
Meanwhile, Jinsook Han, chief strategy, corporate development, and global agentic AI officer, said that at Genpact, this shift is made possible by combining AI and domain-specific human experts.
“What we’re doing is combining domain-specific small and large language models with expert people into what we call agentic solutions,” she said, in an exclusive interview with AIM.
Han further added that these solutions, offered as SaaS 2.0, blend pre-trained agents, years of domain knowledge, and compliance-aware exception handling, providing clients with modular services across finance, supply chain, insurance, and more.
“The people in the agentic world are highly trained to work with agents and make sure that it’s driven through the outcome, in addition to what they were doing before,” Han added.
She noted that, with agentic AI in enterprise environments, the company is already experiencing revenue growth, despite productivity gains and discounts passed to clients.
The market expectation is that if you offer agentic AI, clients will ask for discounts and are used to paying based on that. However, Han said, amidst this, the company has defied that expectation and is expanding its revenue stream.
While large-scale AI deployment remains in its early stages globally, Genpact is reportedly seeing measurable gains. Han said the company reported a 3% growth even as some investors remained sceptical about the financial impact of automation-led transformation.
In the first quarter of 2025, Genpact reported net revenue of $1.215 billion, marking a 7.4% increase compared to the same period last year.
For the second quarter of 2025, the results, which will be announced on August 7, the company expects net revenues to be between $1.210 billion and $1.233 billion. It would reflect a year-over-year growth of approximately 2.8% to 4.8% on a reported basis. On a constant currency basis, the company projects growth in the range of 2.5% to 4.5%.
Genpact is deploying agents across industries, including finance, supply chain, insurance, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, and media, and plans to expand further.
Moving Beyond Headcount Metrics
The company recently launched Genpact’s AP Suite, an AI-agentic solution built to automate the entire accounts payable (AP) workflow. It combines deep finance domain expertise with Microsoft Azure’s AI stack to deliver goal-oriented autonomy across invoice processing, anomaly detection, and vendor communication.
The suite comprises four primary modules: AP Capture for smart data extraction, AP Advance for complete invoice processing, AP Trace for identifying fraud and errors, and AP Assist, a GenAI-powered helpdesk that handles supplier queries via conversational interfaces.
Han said the solution is available on Oracle and will soon be available on Workday. She further added that Genpact deployed the Accounts Payable (AP) solution internally before offering it to clients, calling itself Client Zero.
“Even with our already efficient process, we saw a double-digit reduction in headcount and throughput improved anywhere from 30% to 70%,” she claimed. Notably, the company’s agentic AP Suite agents now handle more than 70% of Genpact’s invoices and payments.
Human in the Loop
Genpact’s AI Gigafactory accelerates product development and scaling, utilising a proprietary code generator called Cora Code Geny. Agents created at the Gigafactory are delivered more swiftly and are utilised both internally and externally.
Han clarified that AI coding tools manage the basics, but human oversight remains crucial. Senior engineers review, fill gaps, and ensure smooth operation. She said, “Machines break, and no one can predict when.”
She added that even well-performing models can unexpectedly break due to new environments or variables. So, Genpact monitors 24/7 using dashboards, action boards, and signal boards to detect anomalies.
To enable this transformation, Genpact is investing heavily in upskilling. Employees go through layered training programs using external resources, internal platforms like Genome.ai, and account-specific assessments.
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