Anthropic's AI plug-ins shake India's staffing-intensive IT sector; stocks dive 6%

Feb 4 : Shares of Indian IT exporters slumped 6.3 per cent on Wednesday, tracking losses in global software stocks, after Anthropic launched new tools that heightened concerns over AI-driven disruption in the data and professional services industry.

U.S.-based Anthropic on Friday launched  plug-ins for its Claude Cowork agent to automate tasks across legal, sales, marketing and data analysis, triggering a selloff in U.S. and European data analytics and software stocks and deepening concerns in India’s $283 billion IT sector, whose labour-intensive model relies on deploying large workforces for client projects.

The Indian IT sub‑index was on track for its worst day since March 2020, with all 10 constituents in the red. Infosys led declines with a 7.3 per cent drop.

Other heavyweights TCS and Wipro fell 5.8 per cent and 3.9 per cent respectively, while HCLTech was down 5.1 per cent.

"As Indian enterprises integrate Claude for critical coding workflows, dependency on large vendor teams may decline, squeezing billable hours and margins," said Systematix Group analyst Ambrish Shah.

Anthropic’s advanced AI systems also threaten entry‑level talent pool at Indian IT firms by replacing routine development and testing tasks, he added.