FirstHand

India’s future with AI cannot be understood through a Western lens of rigid job roles and formalized labor. Over 80% of India’s workforce operates in fluid, informal systems where work is constantly reshaped by circumstance, not assigned through structured hierarchies. AI is entering not a neatly organized labor market, but a landscape defined by adaptability. While certain process-driven sectors like IT and BPO will feel pressure, the deeper story is one of mutation, not displacement. India repeatedly reorganizes itself through shocks—from demonetization to digital transitions—and this capacity to reconfigure gives it a unique advantage. AI will shrink some outsourcing categories but also create new “first-pass/second-pass” global workflows in fields like radiology, compliance, and legal services, where human oversight remains essential. As India’s domestic consumption surges and millions gain access to AI-enabled tools in local languages, new forms of entrepreneurship, services, and hybrid human–AI work will multiply. Automation in India will follow its own economic logic: not humanoid robots, but targeted, cost-effective tools that integrate into existing workflows. In a world where careers become episodic and tasks evolve rapidly, India’s greatest strength may be its deeply embedded informal intelligence—the ability to adapt, recombine skills, and navigate unstructured opportunity