Amid growing anxiety over artificial intelligence and job security, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, founder and executive vice-chairman of Info Edge, sought to calm fears by emphasising that AI is more likely to transform work than erase it. Speaking on Monday, February 16, at the AI Impact Summit 2026, he underlined that the technology is currently being used to boost efficiency and unlock new business opportunities rather than replace employees.
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AI as a productivity multiplier
Addressing the "Future of Employability and AI" session, Bikhchandani explained that companies are increasingly deploying AI to handle tasks that were earlier considered financially impractical. Instead of cutting staff, many firms are using automation to serve customer segments that previously received little attention due to cost constraints.
Illustrating this shift, he shared an example of how AI-powered voice bots can reach thousands of low-paying clients, something that would otherwise require significant manpower and expense.
"You can sit in office and you can make phone calls now the bottom 5100 clients who really don't pay that much. It doesn't make financial sense to have a person person holding them and calling on them, it doesn't make financial sense for a person who and for India, so we put a chatbot, a voice bot automatically calls, you can't make out it's not a human being, that's how it's advanced, right, and suddenly we are calling them up," Mint quoted Bikhchandani.
He added, "Now what is happening here is stuff that is not getting done, we have served an underserved segment, an underserved market by using AI. Thus nobody is thrown out of a company because of AI, I don't want that happening going forward, but right now it's being used to increase productivity, it is being used to do stuff better, it is being used to do stuff better."
Advice for young professionals
Bikhchandani urged young workers to focus less on policy debates or building large language models and more on practical skill-building.
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"How AI is like that. You don't have to build LLMs, right, and I tell you what to all the young people here, you don't worry about system problems, you don't worry about policy issues, you just worry about your job here and your career, your individual career," he was quoted as saying by Mint.
"What should you do, what should you do to make sure AI doesn't make you lose your job, and AI enables you to get your turn? Just learn 5, 10, 15 useful AI tools. Let me assure you the older people in any company would not know that because they are not quick learners, but if you learn them right, you will get your now," Bikhchandani added.
Offering a contrasting outlook, Vineet Nayyar, former CEO of HCL Technologies, noted that AI could affect nearly half of existing roles while also generating a comparable wave of new employment opportunities. The discussions unfolded at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, attended by global leaders, including Emmanuel Macron, Lula da Silva, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, and Antonio Guterres.
