In a post on X, he was referring to a report by US firm Citrini Research that sketches a fictional 2028 in which agentic coding tools drive the cost of software production close to the cost of electricity.
“In the past few days, markets have been whipsawing in response to various AI scenarios, most recently the Citrini thought experiment. In that scenario, corporations sharply reduce or cancel outsourcing contracts, revenues at major Indian IT firms decline, IT exports shrink, India’s balance of payments comes under strain and in its most dramatic passage, even the IMF is imagined to be in preliminary discussions with New Delhi,” Mahindra said.
He termed it as great thought exercise, but countered the report by quoting Mark Twain who once said, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” He also put forth an alternative scenario.
“I do not claim to have a foolproof counter-scenario. The future remains magically uncertain. Markets are swinging because they are trying to price that uncertainty & in that sense, perhaps they are behaving rationally,” Mahindra said.
AI will undoubtedly put pressure on IT services companies. Yes, they will need to become more efficient, reduce cost structures, rethink headcount models and move away from pure effort-based pricing toward outcomes & value delivery, he said.
But what if AI does not eliminate service providers & instead makes the best ones even more central? Mahindra quipped.
As AI systems scale across enterprises, someone still has to ensure secure data foundations; integration across legacy and cloud systems; governance, compliance and auditability; mission-critical reliability, he argued.
Especially for medium and large enterprises, integration is messy, regulation is heavy, and failure costs are high, the differentiator may not be who supplies effort but who can deliver outcomes, manage risk and help deliver ‘Scale at Speed’ as we like to say at Tech Mahindra, he pointed out.
“That role doesn’t disappear. It evolves. So an alternate scenario, offered with humility and not certainty, is that services firms that pivot decisively toward AI orchestration and outcome-based delivery will remain extremely relevant,” Mahindra said.
