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Homegrown technology firm Zoho Corporation has paused its annual pay hikes and pruned its marketing expenditure, citing sharply escalating Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure costs and an uncertain outlook for the software sector, founder Sridhar Vembu said on Tuesday. In a post on social media platform X, Vembu described the global employment landscape for the software sector as "grim" and said that the company has kept its headcount flat for the past 18 months while making efforts to avoid mass layoffs. "The business outlook for software is uncertain, and AI has raised costs dramatically with a) A massive 4-fold increase in server prices which we need for data centres and b) AI usage increasing rapidly, leading to much higher expenses, which we are trying to control," Vembu said. He added that a "challenging geopolitical backdrop" has further compounded these operational pressures. Outlining the internal measures taken to navigate the headwinds, Vembu stated that the comp
As much as 80 per cent of TCS' new hires will be talent with digital and Artificial Intelligence (AI) skills going forward, a top company official has said. With the share of AI-led work in overall revenue growing to 10 per cent in the recently concluded September quarter, the country's largest IT services company said a growth in the share of AI revenues will help it expand its profit margins, which remain below its aspirational levels. "Of the 4,500 that we have added in Q2, I would say safely 25 to 30 per cent are pure AI and total about 80 per cent is new age," the company's chief operating officer Arathi Subramanian told PTI here. When asked if the same proportion will continue going ahead as well, she replied in the affirmative and added that the desired talent is available in the market. When asked if it is advantage for freshers over the mid-career professionals in this sort environment, where their AI-nativity and relatively lower costs would be of help to the former, she
With AI becoming part of everyday life, a top global expert on artificial intelligence has called for integrating AI literacy into India's education curriculum and creating incentives for AI companies to invest in child safety. Noting that opportunities and risks presented by AI are global, Cathy Li, Head of the Centre for AI Excellence at the World Economic Forum, emphasised that solutions must be localised, especially for India given its diversity, and safeguards need to work across languages and cultures. Li, co-author of a whitepaper titled 'Children's Safety and Well-Being in the Age of AI: Best Practices and Incentives', told PTI in an interview that AI systems in India need to be tested across languages and cultural contexts, but also for different levels of connectivity, digital literacy and device access. The recently released report said AI can unlock major benefits for children, but only if safety, agency, inclusion, and accountability are built in. Asked about specific