How a US tech giant’s AI ambitions came to be Indian IT’s bugbear

Sonata Software Ltd, which entered Indian IT’s $1 billion revenue club last year, recently said it was likely to record lower-than-expected revenue from its “largest client” for the January-March period, its final quarter of 2024-25.

“… we would like to inform you that the revenue estimates for Q4 2024-25 from our largest client are likely to be lower than anticipated, resulting in lower revenue from our international business for the said quarter than previously envisioned during the previous analyst/investor call held on 6th February 2025,” Sonata said in a 16 April stock exchange filing.

During Sonata’s third-quarter post-earnings call with analysts in February, the management had projected a revenue decline of 3.5% for the March quarter, attributing this to the company’s biggest client account in the technology, media and telecommunications sector.

Sonata Software’s largest client is Microsoft Corp., accounting for upwards of $100 million in annual revenue for the Bengaluru-based company, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. 

Sonata’s recent update to the stock exchanges is a rare instance of an Indian IT company calling out lower business from a top client. The company did not disclose if it was referring to Microsoft in its exchange filing or during its February post-earnings call, or the specific reason for the revenue decline from its top client. 

But industry experts have pegged this on Microsoft’s increasing reliance on its own AI capabilities to handle tasks it had been outsourcing.

If Microsoft’s AI ambitions are expected to hurt Sonata’s revenues, that would be a concern for India’s other top IT outsourcers as well, considering they all count the US tech giant among their top clients.

Microsoft, which follows a July-June financial calendar, ended its previous financial year with $245 billion in revenue. In other words, Microsoft is almost four times the size of Accenture Plc., the world’s largest IT services company, by revenue.

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Sonata’s clarion call

Sonata’s domestic business, which includes reselling product licences, makes up 70% of its revenue. Outsourcing engineers to clients accounts for the remaining 30%.

Two-thirds of Sonata’s $1.04 billion revenue in 2023-24 flowed from Microsoft, according to an analyst. Of this revenue from Microsoft, a significant chunk came from selling the US company’s product licences to Sonata’s domestic clients, and the remaining from outsourcing engineers to Microsoft.

Sonata’s clarion call comes at a time when its larger peers have already started baking in GenAI-led efficiencies in their conversations with clients. While the bosses of Indian IT are confident of added demand brought about by Gen AI, analysts expect AI to consume much of the work pertaining to customer support, application maintenance and management.

Sonata declined to reply to Mint’s questionnaire citing a regulatory silent period.

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The Microsoft model

Homegrown IT services companies work with Microsoft in two primary ways.

One, as system integrators for Microsoft’s software products. If an ice cream chain wants to use Microsoft’s software to manage its sales and finance, it can purchase the software from IT outsourcers like Sonata Software. Sonata will not just give the ice cream company access to Microsoft’s software but also fit the software in its computers, earning extra money.

Two, IT service providers send engineers to Microsoft to manage its software products. These engineers ensure the functioning and backend requirements of Microsoft’s software sold to companies such as the ice cream chain. 

“Microsoft outsources a whole host of product development work to Indian IT services companies. There is always a need for feature advancements and bug fixes in its software and a lot of this commoditised low-end, product maintenance work is outsourced,” said Pramod Gubbi, founder of Marcellus Investment Managers, a Mumbai-based investment management firm.

It is this aspect of business with Microsoft that is being renegotiated because of artificial intelligence, according to industry experts.

“What we are seeing is the impact of Gen AI (generative AI) on IT services companies. Microsoft is now billing fewer executives from IT outsourcers because AI tools are being used to automate the work that these engineers do,” said Gubbi. “Even if the amount of people billed are the same, Microsoft is asking for productivity benefits brought about by AI.”

This will likely affect most of India’s IT outsourcers, said another analyst. 

“In the current market conditions, we have seen Microsoft pulling back on spending with its IT service partners, which includes leading Indian-heritage firms,” said Phil Fersht, chief executive of HFS Research, a Massachusetts-based IT advisory. “Microsoft is looking to invest more resources into its own Indian GCCs (global capacity centers) and other global support centers.”

Microsoft did not reply to queries emailed on 28 April and 1 May.

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The other affected outsourcer

Two other analysts said LTIMindtree Ltd was also impacted by Microsoft re-assessing its business with Indian IT outsourcers. 

“We believe even LTIMindtree was impacted by this. However, for LTIM, it is only the IT outsourcing work that is getting affected,” said one of them, an analyst with a Mumbai-based brokerage.

The other analyst said Microsoft was LTIMindtree’s largest client, fetching India’s sixth-largest IT company at least $50 million in annual revenue. The major chunk of LTIMindtree’s business with Microsoft includes managing the US tech giant’s IT infrastructure.

LTIMindtree recently said productivity benefits that it had passed on to a ‘top client’ would impact its revenue in the third and fourth quarters. IT services companies pass productivity gains to clients by doing the same amount of work with fewer people, which, however, results in smaller revenue as fewer engineers are billed by the client.

“The productivity gain that we pass to the client, and especially the top client… at least one more quarter we have to bear that before it stabilizes,” Debashis Chatterjee, chief executive of LTIMindtree, said during the company’s post-earnings call with analysts on 16 January.

During LTIMindtree’s latest post-earnings call on 23 April, Chatterjee’s successor and CEO-designate, Venu Lambu, said the productivity benefits had been passed on to that top client by the end of March 2025.

LTIMindtree did not respond to queries emailed on Thursday.

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