CNBC's Inside India newsletter: Will AI make or break India?

This report is from this week's CNBC's "Inside India" newsletter which brings you timely, insightful news and market commentary on the emerging powerhouse and the big businesses behind its meteoric rise. Like what you see? You can subscribe  here.

It was a tale of two European companies. But one that could foreshadow India's growth story. 

When fintech firm Klarna said it was using artificial intelligence to provide customer service earlier this year, shares of the French outsourcing giant Teleperformance tumbled by nearly 20%. 

The Swedish buy-now-pay-later firm had revealed that its AI chatbot was now doing the work of 700 full-time customer service jobs, netting the firm $40 million in savings. That was enough to frighten investors into dumping shares of Teleperformance over concerns that AI would disrupt its own profitable call center business in the future. 

The Paris-listed company, worth nearly 6 billion euros ($6.4 billion), employs 500,000 people globally who do telemarketing, customer relationship management, and content moderation, among other roles — all at risk of being disrupted by AI. The firm's stock has tanked by 55% since ChatGPT launched, while the French stock market has risen by 24%. 

Can Teleperformance's stock plunge be the canary in the coal mine for what is likely to happen to India because of AI? The chief executive of India's Tata Consultancy Services thinks so. 

K Krithivasan told the Financial Times recently that AI is likely to resolve customer complaints even before people pick up the phone to call a company's helpline — eliminating most call center jobs in the process.

The head of TCS, which predominantly employs software developers in its global workforce of some 600,000 people, expects this