Why India’s IT Giants Need Mexico When AI Shrinks the Team
By Sanjana Gupta ·
Indian IT services firms have spent years building operations in Mexico, but the reason those operations matter is now changing. TCS, HCLTech, Wipro, Infosys and Tech Mahindra have all established operations there, and their footprints reveal five different ways to leverage the country.
Codifin, an IT recruitment firm based in Mexico, tells AIM that AI is fundamental to this shift in software engineering. The firm’s recent report describes how AI tools now handle repetitive work that once supported large junior teams. The remaining work demands greater judgement and much closer collaboration with product teams.
That makes geography far more important. While India still offers scale, deep technical expertise, and cost efficiency, Mexico provides smaller teams that can work directly alongside US customers.
For Codifin, Mexico’s pitch goes well beyond cheaper talent. As Mario Emilio Beteta, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Codifin, puts it, “The talent pool combined with a proximity to the US.”
The distinction matters because Mexico sits within zero to three hours of US time zones, whereas India sits roughly 10.5 to 13 hours ahead.
A team in Mexico can join US stand-ups and review code on the same day. Meanwhile, Indian teams can handle larger workloads through asynchronous handoffs. The result is a two-hub model rather than a total shift from India to Mexico.
Mexico is Becoming the Product-Facing Layer
Codifin’s report describes India as the offshore scale hub and Mexico as the nearshore hub. Indian teams can focus on deep research, platform engineering and data infrastructure, while Mexican teams can handle product squads, applied AI and ML, UX and bug triage.
The report puts typical Mexican teams at 10 to 80 engineers. They tend to be smaller and more senior than their Indian counterparts.
The distinction is also reflected in hiring. Beteta says that while India brings deeper technical expertise, Mexico brings product expertise closer to US teams. “With the technical expertise and the product expertise, how can we just complement and make a better product?” he asks.
Codifin points to one client running GCCs in Mexico, India and Eastern Europe. Its Mexico technology team has about 50 to 60 people. US hiring managers visit the Mexican team monthly, and according to Beteta, the Mexico team recorded five times as many promotions as the client’s other GCCs.
This structure moves away from the traditional “follow the sun” approach, where teams hand off work across time zones overnight. AI has made real-time collaboration far more valuable.
As the report mentions: “A question that takes four minutes to answer live can take a working day across a large timezone gap.”
TCS Shows Where the Model is Heading
TCS has the largest Indian IT footprint among the companies covered. Entering Mexico in 2003, it now employs more than 12,000 associates there. Its Guadalajara centre alone houses more than 6,000 employees, making it TCS’ largest delivery centre outside India.
TCS also operates in Mexico City, Querétaro and Monterrey. Querétaro houses Latin America’s first Threat Management Center. It also works with more than 150 Mexican universities to feed a steady talent pipeline for its growing operations.
The Indian IT giant has now added an AI layer to that established delivery network. In August, it opened a Gemini Experience Center in Mexico City with Google Cloud.
The centre is TCS’ ninth Gemini Experience Center globally and second in Latin America. It has more than 3,000 industry and context-aware AI agents built with Gemini Enterprise. TCS said it is focusing more heavily on certain aspects in Mexico. “We are doubling down on AI in Mexico,” the company confirmed to AIM.
It is hiring people with cloud and other relevant digital capabilities. It also sees growing interest in physical AI. “The Google Cloud partnership and the Gemini Experience Centres are helping us engage with customers on AI-led use cases,” it said.
5 Firms, 5 Mexico Plays
HCLTech entered Mexico in 2008 and has centres in Guadalajara, Mexico City and Monterrey. Codifin puts its headcount at about 2,400, based on a 2022 figure. In 2022, the company announced plans to hire 1,300 employees over a two-year period, specifically targeting systems engineers, digital transformation engineers and data scientists.
However, Codifin notes it remains unverified publicly whether HCLTech actually reached that projected 3,700-employee mark. Tracking whether this pledge was met serves as a practical baseline for assessing how the firm’s overall Mexico strategy has evolved over time.
Wipro takes a noticeably different strategic path, employing more than 1,600 employees in Mexico with an emphasis on local talent, which makes up roughly 96% of its workforce. Its primary centre in Guadalajara houses 2,000 seats and serves more than 25 customers. Wipro markets Mexico around North American workday alignment.
Codifin says Wipro has turned nearshore delivery into a distinct value proposition, arguing that global outsourcing must transcend basic cost efficiency and traditional labour arbitrage.
Moreover, Infosys maintains a footprint of more than 500 professionals in Mexico across its operations in Monterrey and Mexico City. More than 200 of these employees work in BPM to serve a client base of over 50. Its Mexican hiring includes GCC integration and database migration roles.
That points towards migration and architecture work alongside its BPM base.
Tech Mahindra has a different profile. Its Mexico City operations focus mainly on bilingual customer experience and business process services. Its work includes support for US telecom and internet service providers.
Looking at these five companies together reveals that Indian IT giants are not pursuing a single uniform blueprint in Mexico. Their differences suggest that Indian IT firms are not moving the same work from India to Mexico. They are using Mexico for different layers of the delivery chain.
TCS has built scale, while Wipro has made nearshoring a distinct offering. Infosys is moving towards GCC integration. HCLTech focuses on engineering talent, while Tech Mahindra remains service-heavy.
The cost differential continues to play a practical role in these decisions. Codifin estimates Mexico offers 45–60% savings against US costs, whereas India yields slightly higher savings at 60–70%. Nevertheless, cost alone does not explain the dual-hub model. The report says companies increasingly divide work by how much conversation it requires.
India retains high-volume projects that benefit from scale and depth. Mexico takes on tasks that benefits from speed and proximity. That distinction could become more important as AI changes engineering teams. Codifin’s data shows AI and machine learning roles rising sharply in technology hiring.
The report further points to falling entry-level hiring and rising demand for experienced AI engineers. For Indian IT firms, operating in Mexico is consequently evolving beyond traditional offshore labour relocation.
Instead, it offers a direct channel to locate senior engineers alongside the US leaders defining product direction, making Mexico a key complement to India’s engineering scale.