New Delhi, Dec. 28 -- The past week saw a landmark acquisition deal-the largest to date in India's $283 billion IT services industry. Coforge, India's seventh-largest tech services firm, splurged $2.39 billion to buy a US data analytics firm, Encora. We haven't seen yet what the market thinks of it, but the deal reinforced the battle bugles in India-as far as AI is concerned, the wars are set to begin.

With this acquisition, Coforge expects to earn $2 billion a year by the next fiscal year. All of this is in anticipation of AI and its benefits.

Coforge, however, isn't the only one. Over the past one week, HCLTech, India's third-largest tech services firm, spent $400 million for two strategic acquisitions in AI and data analytics. These ...