Just as the business world gets its head around generative AI, the next evolution is already here: agentic AI. A landmark projection from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) suggests this new frontier will not just automate jobs, but create vast new work.
Beyond Prompts: What Is Agentic AI?
If
generative AI like ChatGPT is a brilliant intern that needs specific instructions for every task, agentic AI is the project manager you can give a goal to. Instead of just responding to prompts, agentic AI systems can understand a high-level objective, break it down into multiple steps, use various tools, and work autonomously to achieve the goal. Think of systems that don't just write code, but also test it, deploy it, and monitor it for bugs, all without constant human supervision. This shift from 'doing' to 'achieving' is what makes agentic AI so powerful. It perceives its environment, reasons through options, acts on its decisions, and learns from the results, creating a continuous loop of improvement. It’s a move from simple task automation to complex workflow orchestration, redefining the relationship between humans and machines in the workplace.
A $200 Billion Net New Opportunity
Boston Consulting Group's analysis projects that agentic AI will unlock up to $200 billion in net new value for the technology services market within the next five years. This figure is crucial because it accounts for the dual impact of AI: efficiency and expansion. While agentic systems will undoubtedly automate and shrink some existing revenue streams—BCG estimates a reduction of around $200 billion from current services—it will create even more new work, estimated at $300-$400 billion. This expansion will come from three main areas. First is the 'build-deploy-run' of agentic solutions themselves, creating demand for everything from AI application development to infrastructure modernization. Second, as AI tools mature, more complex work will become outsourceable. Finally, the need for robust human oversight, governance, and strategy will create new, higher-value service lines.
The New Shape of Tech Services
The work created by agentic AI will look different from traditional IT services. Instead of large teams handling routine maintenance or support tickets, the focus will shift to designing, building, and managing these autonomous systems. BCG identifies 40 distinct 'Applied AI' roles that will become central, including forward-deployed engineers, AI operations engineers, and semantic engineers. These roles involve building and operating AI solutions in production environments. For example, a bank might use agentic AI to manage the entire IT modernisation process for legacy systems, or an insurance firm could automate claims intake, triage, and fraud reconciliation. Other new services will involve managing complex IT change requests, where AI can analyze risk and prevent outages, or providing highly personalized customer support that goes far beyond scripted responses. The model is shifting from selling time and materials to delivering measurable, outcome-based results powered by proprietary AI platforms.
A Moment of Reinvention for Indian IT
For India's globally dominant technology services sector, this is a pivotal moment. The traditional model, built on labour arbitrage and massive headcount, is facing a fundamental disruption. The rise of agentic AI presents both an existential threat to legacy services and an enormous opportunity to capture a large share of the new $200 billion market. The challenge is one of talent transformation. According to BCG, the talent needed for this shift is largely already on the payrolls of major Indian IT firms. The key will be rapidly identifying, upskilling, and deploying existing employees—like data scientists, DevOps engineers, and fullstack developers—into new Applied AI roles. Companies that act quickly to build these capabilities from within will gain a significant cost advantage and be better positioned to meet enterprise demand. This isn't just about adding an 'AI' layer to existing services; it requires fundamentally redesigning how work is delivered and how value is created.
