- India's $315 billion IT sector under pressure
- Worries about AI disruption return to the fore
- AI momentum must slow for investor interest to return: HSBC
May 12 (Reuters) - India's IT shares fell to a three-year low on Tuesday as investor jitters around the threat posed by artificial intelligence to flagship IT firms flared up again, after OpenAI announced a new AI venture.
The Nifty IT index fell 3.6% to its lowest since May 2023, with Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, HCL Technologies and Wipro falling between 2.5% and 4%.
Analysts at HSBC said in a Tuesday note that India's top-tier IT firms largely failed to meet street expectations for earnings in March quarter as well as in their outlooks for the new financial year, adding that strong spending globally on AI could be "crowding out" demand for traditional IT services.
HSBC's warning comes a day after OpenAI said it is launching a new company backed by more than $4 billion, embedding engineers into organizations to identify where AI can make the most impact. It's the latest challenge to Indian IT firms' business model from a major AI company targeting enterprise clients.
Indian IT stocks are unlikely to attract positive investor interest unless global AI activity, cloud capex growth and cloud revenue momentum slow, HSBC said.
Indian IT companies derive a significant share of their revenue from North America and are considered sensitive to U.S. economic uncertainty and corporate technology spending trends.
The industry has been under pressure for much of 2026, starting with a February rout after the roll-out of Anthropic's Claude Code and on fears rapid advances in generative AI would disrupt demand for traditional IT and professional services.
India's IT stocks have slid 25.4% so far this year, making them India's worst-performing sector, compared with a 9.7% drop in the benchmark Nifty 50.
March quarter results have done little to soothe investor worries. Dollar revenue at industry bellwether Tata Consultancy Services shrank 0.5% year-on-year to $30 billion for the year ended March - the first decline since the company's 2004 IPO.
Industry peers have flagged challenges of meeting targets with limited visibility on demand: HCL Tech's CEO C Vijayakumar said in the company's post-earnings investor call it took "25%-30% more effort to convert and get to the same number" in terms of total contract value.
The broader Indian market remained under pressure on Tuesday, with the rupee sliding to a record low on elevated crude oil prices with talks to end the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran finding no success.
Reporting by Chandini Monnappa, Surbhi Misra and Pranav Kashyap in Bengaluru; Editing by Ronojoy Mazumdar
Source: Reuters