‘Large enterprises have to unravel business processes to make them AI-first’

Large enterprises have to unravel business processes to make them AI-first and to rewire business processes in terms of AI-ready, Virtusa COO Venkatesan Vijayaraghavan said on Friday (February 13, 2026) at The Hindu Tech Summit 2026.

In a conversation with John Xavier, Tech Editor, The Hindu, on the topic, ‘Managing the post Anthropic Plug-in Era’, Mr. Vijayaraghavan said, “I am assuring you all. We are definitely not in the coffin, we will surface back with much more to do. We will go into the box, but we will come out of the box because many more boxes are going to open,” he said.

Pointing to small and medium businesses, he said, “They will start new products with new models, and they may throw away the existing ones.”

Speaking about a transition towards 20% humans and 80% agents, Mr. Vijayaraghavan said, “50% of the deals Virtusa participates in, we are talking about an agent-first approach in every field.”

Pointing to the need for being super-strong on the underlying principles of core engineering, Mr. Vijayaraghavan said, “We are getting certain initial success in that segment, but we need to take this to our universities. I can do coding today in Java, tomorrow in Python, day after in something else, but today my problem is that people come and ask for those skills in a human. Without AI-first, I am struggling. It almost feels like walking to Starbucks and asking for a hot ice cream.”

To a question on the recent release of Anthropic plug-ins and its impact, he said, “I am sure many people have been having sleepless nights over the last week as materials keep coming at a speed we cannot catch up with. We are now focussed on what are the services that we cannibalise, what are the services that will go on with an AI-first approach. And our portfolio companies offer us a very good push. A good variety of our portfolio companies who are innovative, who are doing products, and we are learning a lot from them,” he said.