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

By Vivek Kumar M and Kashish Tandon Feb 4 (Reuters) – Shares of Indian IT exporters slumped 6.3% 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% drop. Other heavyweights TCS and Wipro fell 5.8% and 3.9% respectively, while HCLTech was down 5.1%. "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.  (Reporting by Kashish Tandon and Vivek Kumar M in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee)

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