NTT DATA is making a big bet on agentic AI and expects it to generate $2 billion in revenue by 2027, backed by AI-native services across its enterprise portfolio.
In an exclusive interview with AIM, Subhashini Desigan, Executive Managing Director, Apps BPS and Data (North America) and Global Strategy and Operations Head, explains how the company is embedding AI across its services, rethinking pricing models, and preparing for the next phase of enterprise adoption.
She reveals NTT DATA’s applications, BPS, and data business generate more than $6 billion in annual revenue, accounting for around 20% of the company’s total revenue.
Agentic AI Bet
Desigan says that today, most of NTT DATA’s services are infused with agentic AI. “All of our offerings across applications, BPS and data now have generative AI embedded into them,” she says.
According to Desigan, AI has become part of software engineering, application management, quality engineering, data engineering, analytics, migration and modernisation.
On the business process side, NTT DATA is embedding AI into industry-specific workflows such as healthcare claims processing, insurance enrollment and other BPO operations.
Beyond upgrading existing services, the company has also launched new offerings around agentic Business Process as a Service (BPaaS).
“We are now looking at newer offerings in agentic BPaaS where, on top of customer systems or core systems, we are providing an agentic grid to drive agentification and the combination of human agents and bots,” Desigan says.
The company is also applying AI to tackle legacy software, an area many enterprises continue to struggle with.
“About 30 to 40% of companies are still spending time maintaining legacy applications,” she adds. “With AI, we are able to drive productivity and reduce technical debt through digital twins of applications.”
She further reveals that NTT DATA has already deployed digital twins for applications, business processes and data layers, which allow customers to simulate business scenarios, understand application dependencies and create semantic layers that make enterprise data easier to consume.
“We have digital twins of the data layer that allow us to create a semantic ontology, significantly democratising data across the organisation,” she explains.
AIVista
To accelerate its AI business, the company earlier this year launched AIVista, a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT DATA. Led by former NVIDIA and AWS executive Dr Bratin Saha, the company is building last-mile specialised AI-native businesses and agentic workflows for highly regulated industries.
According to Desigan, the business complements the company’s broader AI organisation, which is overseen by CEO Abhijit Dubey, who also serves as Chief AI Officer.
“You can think about it as a market-making AI unit that is really focused on full-stack transformational AI-native solutions,” she says, adding that this new AI unit has forward-deployed engineers to drive impact with the customer.
The group is building AI systems spanning consulting, operations, connectivity and infrastructure, with initial focus areas including banking, insurance, manufacturing and contact centres.
“We are completely reimagining our contact centres,” Desigan explains.
Outcome-Based Pricing
While many IT services firms have only recently begun discussing outcome-based pricing, Desigan says NTT DATA has been moving in that direction for years.
She points to the company’s partnership with Sierra AI in contact centre automation as one example. “In week one, we were able to automate nearly 70% of the calls because of the intelligence built into our contact centre business.”
She notes that the company charges only for calls that are completely automated by its end-to-end solution. “If a human had to take the call, we don’t even charge for it.”
The company also uses its own tools, such as ForeSight Voice Mining, to perform real-time sentiment analysis during customer interactions.
At the same time, Desigan acknowledges that not every customer is ready for pure outcome-based commercial models. In many engagements, NTT DATA still combines traditional pricing with performance-based incentives tied to measurable business outcomes.
Competition with Big Tech
As big tech companies increasingly offer enterprise AI services directly, Desigan believes the market is evolving through partnerships rather than competition. Microsoft and AWS recently launched new forward-deployed engineering units, backed by investments of $2.5 billion and $1 billion, respectively.
“We look at hyperscalers specifically as co-innovators,” she says. “We have huge global partnerships with all the hyperscaler companies as well as AI companies such as OpenAI and Mistral AI.”
Through its partnership with Mistral, the company is developing sustainable and highly secure private AI solutions for organisations in regulated sectors such as financial services, insurance, defence and the public sector.
Last year, the company partnered with OpenAI to become the first authorised distributor of ChatGPT Enterprise in Japan. The collaboration also includes developing industry-specific AI agents and enterprise AI solutions, supported by a dedicated OpenAI Centre of Excellence.
With increasingly capable foundation models changing the economics of enterprise AI, Desigan says NTT DATA continues to monitor developments closely while maintaining flexibility.
“We are closely watching and monitoring the advancements. We are ready to pivot and adapt to all the changes that AI is going to bring,” she says.
Desigan argues that NTT DATA’s differentiation lies in its ability to deliver across infrastructure, cloud, applications, data and business operations. She shares that the company spends around $3 billion annually on innovation.
Manufacturing & Insurance are Moving Fastest
Among industry verticals, Desigan sees manufacturing and insurance emerging as some of the strongest adopters of enterprise AI.
She cites the company’s work with BMW, where a generative AI platform is now being used by around 60,000 employees.
Across manufacturing, AI is also reaching operational environments that were previously difficult to automate. “Agentification is allowing us to get into areas that we could not have gotten to before, like assembly line operations,” she says.
India Remains Central to Growth
Desigan confirms that NTT DATA plans to hire 5,000 employees in India.
She says the company remains committed to expanding in its largest markets, including North America, Germany and the UK, while also increasing its presence in India. “We are currently a top-ten player. Our goal is to become a top-five player in India.”
Singapore, Australia and South Africa are also among the company’s strategic growth markets.
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