One signal

The forecast collapse of Indian outsourcing under AI keeps being announced, and it keeps not turning up. ING Bank's assessment, carried by Bloomberg on 17 September, is that the industry shows little sign of losing ground to artificial intelligence. The explanation is movement rather than resistance: India is climbing the value chain into services that are harder to automate.

Why it matters

That flips the usual script. Indian IT services have been the standing exhibit in every argument that AI eats office work first, so a bank analyst reading the sector as adapting rather than bleeding earns a pause. In ING's telling, automation pressure is changing what the industry sells, not how many people it employs, with work migrating towards tasks machines still fumble. One bank's verdict is a reading, not a payroll audit, and the sector's own hiring figures will referee the argument. But as a counterweight to the confident obituaries, it lands.

Discuss: If "harder to automate" mostly means "harder to automate today", is ING describing a durable moat for Indian outsourcing or a countdown to the next wave?

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