{"id":133259,"date":"2025-10-20T05:11:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T05:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/133259\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T05:11:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T05:11:10","slug":"artificial-intelligence-chatbots-replacing-indias-call-centre-workers-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/133259\/","title":{"rendered":"Artificial intelligence chatbots replacing India\u2019s call-centre workers \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a start-up office in this Indian city, developers are fine-tuning artificial-intelligence <\/a>(AI) chatbots that talk and message like humans.<\/p>\n

The company, LimeChat, has an audacious goal: to make customer-service jobs almost obsolete. It says its generative AI <\/a>agents enable clients to slash by 80 the number of workers needed to handle 10,000 monthly queries.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you hire a LimeChat agent, you never have to hire again,\u201d says 28-year-old co-founder Nikhil Gupta.<\/p>\n

Cheap labour and English proficiency helped make India the world\u2019s back office, sometimes at the expense of workers elsewhere. Now, AI-powered systems are subsuming jobs done by headset-wearing graduates in technical support, customer care and data management, sparking a scramble to adapt.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s driving business for AI start-ups <\/a>that help companies slash staffing costs and scale operations, even though many consumers still prefer to deal with a human.<\/p>\n

This account of the disruptive changes <\/a>transforming India\u2019s \u20ac243 billion IT sector is based on interviews with 30 people, including industry executives, recruiters, workers and current and former government officials. AI start-ups and tested voice and text chatbots were also visited that handle increasingly sophisticated customer interactions in human-like ways.<\/p>\n

Rather than pump the brakes as the technology threatens jobs built on routine tasks, the country is accelerating, wagering that a let-it-rip approach will create enough new opportunities to absorb those displaced. The outcome of India\u2019s gamble carries weight far beyond its borders, a test case for whether embracing AI-driven disruption can elevate a developing economy or render it a cautionary tale.<\/p>\n

The global conversational AI market is growing 24 per cent a year and should reach \u20ac35 billion by 2030, consultancy Grand View Research estimates.<\/p>\n

The country, which relies on IT for 7.5 per cent of its gross domestic product, is leaning in. In a February speech, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi said, \u201cwork does not disappear due to technology. Its nature changes and new types of jobs are created\u201d.<\/p>\n

Not everyone shares Modi\u2019s confidence in India\u2019s preparedness. Santosh Mehrotra, a former Indian official and visiting professor at the University of Bath\u2019s Centre for Development Studies, criticised the government for a lack of urgency in assessing AI\u2019s effects on India\u2019s young workforce. \u201cThere\u2019s no game plan,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Business process management employs 1.65 million workers in call centres, payroll, and data handling in India. Hiring has plummeted due to increased automation and digitalisation, despite rising demand for AI co-ordinators and process analysts, says Neeti Sharma, chief executive of staffing firm TeamLease Digital.<\/p>\n

Net headcount in the segment, which represents one-fifth of IT output, grew by fewer than 17,000 workers in each of the past two years, down from 130,000 in 2022-2023 and 177,000 in 2021-2022, TeamLease Digital figures show.<\/p>\n

Reuters spoke to three current and five former customer-service workers, who described increasing job insecurity and integration of AI, including tools that suggest responses and bots that handle nearly all routine queries autonomously. Megha S (32) was earning \u20ac8,500 a year at a Bengaluru-based software solutions provider. She said she was laid off last month, just before India\u2019s festive season, as the company moved to implement AI tools to review the quality of sales calls.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was told I am the first one who has been replaced by AI,\u201d says Megha. \u201cI\u2019ve not told my parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sumita Dawra, a former labour ministry secretary who oversaw an Indian government taskforce on AI\u2019s impact on the workforce before retiring in March, said while the technology offered productivity gains that would lead to new jobs, India could consider stronger social security measures, such as unemployment benefits, to help those displaced during the transition.<\/p>\n

However, a senior Indian official said the government believed AI would ultimately have little impact on overall employment. India\u2019s IT and labour ministries, and Modi\u2019s office, didn\u2019t respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Besides AI, factors clouding the outlook for India\u2019s IT sector include: United States tariffs; a proposal by a US politician for a 25 per cent levy on firms using foreign outsourcing services; and President Donald Trump\u2019s \u20ac86,000 fee on new H-1B visas, which tech firms widely use to sponsor Indian workers.<\/p>\n

Investment bank Jefferies predicted in September that India\u2019s call centres would face a revenue hit of 50 per cent \u2013 and about 35 per cent for other back-office functions \u2013 from AI adoption over the next five years.<\/p>\n

\"\"Dublin Bus CEO on recruitment challenges, going electric, and stamping out anti-social behaviour <\/p>\n

That would spell near-term job losses in India, which accounts for 52 per cent of the global outsourcing market.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest impact is going to be on young students coming out of college,\u201d says Pramod Bhasin, who in the 1990s established India\u2019s first call centre with 18 employees for GE Capital, where workstations were partitioned by saris strung from the ceiling.<\/p>\n

In the longer run, India could move from \u201cback office\u201d to the world\u2019s \u201cAI factory\u201d by capitalising on demand for AI engineers and automation deployment, says Bhasin, who went on to found IT services firm Genpact.<\/p>\n

One beneficiary of that demand is LimeChat. Gupta, the co-founder, says his developers and engineers have helped automate 5,000 jobs across India. The company\u2019s bots handle 70 per cent of customer complaints for its clients and it plans to achieve 90-95 per cent within a year, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re giving us 100,000 rupees per month, you are automating the job of at least 15 agents,\u201d says Gupta. At that price \u2013 about \u20ac970 \u2013 the service costs roughly the same as three customer-care staff, he says.<\/p>\n

LimeChat\u2019s sales soared to \u20ac1.3 million in 2024 from \u20ac68,000 two years earlier, regulatory disclosures show. Last year, the firm began integrating Microsoft\u2019s Azure language models and algorithms in a partnership to launch a new ecommerce chatbot.<\/p>\n

Among Gupta\u2019s clients is Indian ayurvedic products firm Kapiva, which has deployed a LimeChat bot for customer interactions over WhatsApp.<\/p>\n

Keying in a prompt \u2013 \u201cWhat kind of diet should I have to reduce weight?\u201d \u2013 yielded an AI meal-plan creator. A follow-up query in English and Hindi about how a slimming juice differs from another item was also answered, with the chatbot eventually sharing links to Kapiva products with a smiling emoji. Kapiva didn\u2019t respond to questions.<\/p>\n

LimeChat\u2019s rivals include Reliance, the conglomerate chaired by Mukesh Ambani, which acquired Indian start-up Haptik in 2019.<\/p>\n

Haptik says it offers \u201cAI agents that deliver human-like customer experiences\u201d that cost \u20ac103 and can cut support costs by 30 per cent. Revenue skyrocketed to almost \u20ac15 million last year from less than \u20ac850,000 in 2020, disclosures show.<\/p>\n

Haptik promoted a webinar in September by posing the question: \u201cWhat if you had a full-time employee who never sleeps and costs just 10,000 rupees [\u20ac975]?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seeing a huge shift,\u201d says Haptik product manager Suji Ravi. \u201cBrands are not investing in human agents and they want to deploy AI agents.\u201d<\/p>\n

For LimeChat client Mamaearth, an Indian personal-care brand, the main attraction of AI chatbots is scalability, said Vipul Maheshwari, head of product and analytics at parent firm Honasa Consumer.<\/p>\n

\u201cProviding good customer support is make or break for us,\u201d he says. \u201cBut can we infinitely scale my customer support team? Absolutely not.\u201d<\/p>\n

The chatbot used by Mamaearth could go beyond simple assistance like order tracking and help users with queries such as recommending the right products during pregnancy or, in some cases, handle an agitated customer, says Maheshwari.<\/p>\n

The promise and perils of AI are evident at The Media Ant. The Bengaluru-based advertising agency cut 40 per cent of its workforce to about 100 over the past year and vacated space in another building to save on rent, says founder Samir Chaudhary.<\/p>\n

The firm eliminated 15 salespeople, replacing them with AI bots that identify leads and send emails to prospective customers, says Chaudhary. A six-member call centre was replaced with a voice agent called Neha that speaks in near-flawless, Indian-accented English.<\/p>\n

When a reporter asked Neha about advertising on YouTube, it sought details about the budget and target markets, noted the requirements, and ended the conversation thus: \u201cI will email you the details … have a great day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAsk her out for a coffee and she will laugh it off,\u201d says Chaudhary.<\/p>\n

Yet the race to embrace AI isn\u2019t always smooth for companies. Take Sweden\u2019s Klarna. Chatbots helped the fintech firm cut thousands of jobs last year, but its chief executive said in September the company is now \u201ctrying to course correct\u201d and use the technology to improve products rather than reduce costs.<\/p>\n

Chatbots have limitations. While most generic ecommerce-related queries posed by a reporter were handled well by LimeChat bots, some stumped them.<\/p>\n

When LimeChat client Knya\u2019s bot was asked for proof of its claim that a million medical professionals trust its products, such as its stethoscopes, it replied: \u201cI am sorry, I don\u2019t have enough information to answer your question.\u201d Knya didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Customer surveys show chatbots are still disliked by many.<\/p>\n

An August 2024 EY survey of 1,000 Indian people found 62 per cent made purchases influenced by AI recommendations, compared with 30 per cent globally. Yet, \u201cthe desire for a human connection remains strong\u201d, noted EY, with 78 per cent preferring online platforms that provide human support.<\/p>\n

LimeChat\u2019s Gupta, though, said well-trained AI agents could resolve queries faster than humans. He said many standard bots pass conversations to a human agent when they encounter angry customers: \u201cYou need a very small number of people to just handle negative experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 1990s and 2000s, India\u2019s tech boom fuelled rural-to-urban migration. Cities like Bengaluru became outsourcing hubs as domestic firms, including Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro, grew into global juggernauts.<\/p>\n

That expansion trickled through to Ameerpet, a Hyderabad neighbourhood where university graduates fill classrooms to learn IT skills and earn certifications for tech jobs.<\/p>\n

Ameerpet\u2019s training centres traditionally offered courses in Microsoft Office and programming languages like Java. But as of last April, these centres are increasingly focused on AI training.<\/p>\n

Outside one, Quality Thought, a banner featured a robot overlooking a globe with the letters AI.<\/p>\n

The centre was offering a nine-month course in AI data science and prompt engineering for about \u20ac1,168, more than double the price of a traditional web-development program.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecruiters are asking for students with basic AI skills,\u201d says staffer Priyanka Kandulapati. \u201cWe are going to streamline our courses even further to suit the demand.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a discussion with start-up founders last month about the pace of change, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, who co-founded Sun Microsystems, offered a stark view of the future for India.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll IT services will be replaced in the next five years,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be pretty chaotic.\u201d \u2013 Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a start-up office in this Indian city, developers are fine-tuning artificial-intelligence (AI) chatbots that talk and message…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,18,19,387,17,12604,82,6221],"class_list":{"0":"post-133259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-india","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-narendra-modi","16":"tag-technology","17":"tag-trump-presidency"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}