Aug 25, 2026 • 1 min read
India + Software Services
Indian IT won because it built an enormous system for turning technical talent into reliable software delivery. The next opportunity may be building that system again — with a workforce that includes millions of agents.
Part 7 of 7 — AI, Software Factories, and the Future of Work
India + Software Services
India has spent several decades building one of the world's largest software services industries.
The core business model was straightforward:
Western companies needed software.
India had a huge pool of technical talent.
Services companies organized that talent and sold engineering capacity to the world.
AI could create the second version of this industry.
Except the scarce resource may no longer be engineers.
It may be the ability to coordinate intelligence.
Imagine a software services company where 100 engineers can deliver the volume of work that previously required 500.
Requirements come in from customers.
AI systems analyze their codebases, produce technical plans, execute work, run QA, and prepare releases.
Human engineers increasingly supervise, make architectural decisions, and handle exceptions.
The immediate reaction might be:
"Then services companies need fewer people."
Maybe.
But there's another possibility.
Software becomes dramatically cheaper to produce, which increases how much software the world can afford to build.
Indian IT didn't win because India had the world's best IDE.
It won because India built an enormous system for turning technical talent into reliable software delivery.
The next opportunity might be building that system again.
Except this time, the workforce includes millions of AI agents.
This is the last part of AI, Software Factories, and the Future of Work. Start at AI Will Collapse Organizational Complexity.