Persistent high inflation will impact wage bills and general cost of living and that of doing business, said Keki Mistry, independent director at TCS during the IT company’s AGM meeting, where Tata Sons’ Chairman N Chandrasekaran was conspicuous by his absence.
Addressing stakeholder’s queries, Mistry said, “As far as the impact of persistent high inflation is concerned, wage bills, general cost of living and doing business will obviously be impacted. However, through a number of productivity and operational excellence and various gains in this regard, we have largely been able to mitigate the impact to our business.”
AI to automate some tasks
Responding to queries on whether AI will lead to job losses, Mistry said that recent advances in AI, such as reasoning capabilities and agentic AI, are expected to result in higher levels of automation. “These are early days of this promising technology. We do foresee scenarios where this new form of AI can perform some tasks autonomously that humans do today, This will lead to the new human + AI operating model. Certain service offerings, such as application development, IT and business process operations, are seeing better efficiency, which is a win-win for everyone,” he said, adding that legacy-stacked modernization and AI-led transformation will create huge long-term prospects for TCS.
TCS not under probe for Marks and Spencer
Regarding the cyber attack faced by Marks and Spencer, TCS said it is not under the purview of the related investigation.
“This incident is currently under review and investigation by the customer. As no TCS systems or users were compromised, none of our other customers are impacted. TCS has followed the laid out procedure. The purview of the investigation does not include TCS,” he said, further stating that the company has not seen any impact on its business or customers due to data privacy concerns.
Mistry also rallied questions around the impact of GCCs, stating that company clients continue to see significant value in partnering with TCS, as the company also works on engagement models to collaborate with GCCs.
Chairman absent from AGM
N Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Sons, remained absent from the TCS AGM, after missing another AGM of Tata Consumer Products earlier this week. Addressing the stakeholders, Mistry said this is a very difficult time for the Tata Group and expressed solidarity, “with those affected during these challenging times,” likely referring to the Air India incident.