The query might need sounded summary—if it weren’t coming from the founding father of one in every of India’s largest staffing corporations.
Quess Corp, which Isaac constructed from the bottom up, now locations greater than 630,000 folks in jobs throughout the nation: manufacturing facility employees, safety guards, hospital workers, telecom technicians. It’s an organization that’s outlined employment in its most literal sense—shift rosters, wage slips, onboarding kiosks.
And but, right here was its founder, in a Bengaluru boardroom earlier this yr, asking who ought to maintain the corporate’s latest hires.
Nobody within the room laughed. Not as a result of the concept was humorous, however as a result of they’d already seen it occurring.
One of many AI brokers, or software program coworkers, Nikki, was already on the org chart with a title—chief listening officer. Others had been dealing with mortgage restoration, screening job candidates, guiding name centre representatives via indignant buyer calls, or checking in with workers about morale.
Isaac wasn’t being rhetorical both. He had spent three a long time in HR or human assets, beginning at Godrej & Boyce within the Nineties, then operating staffing operations for Adecco throughout India and the Center East. He knew what it meant to handle folks at scale: grievances, burnout, ambition, belief.
However this was one thing new. These brokers carried out. And somebody, he argued, must be accountable for that efficiency.
“If we’re hiring hundreds of synthetic employees,” he mentioned later, “we would genuinely want somebody to handle their coaching, critiques, perhaps even their well-being.”
Digitide Options, a derivative from Quess Corp, is barely 1 / 4 outdated. It already employs greater than 55,000. More and more, the corporate’s workforce will embrace AI brokers.
For a rustic including one million job seekers every month, the place employment is each political foreign money and private identification, the shift feels nearly subversive.
Isaac as soon as constructed Quess by giving extra folks jobs than maybe anybody else in India’s non-public sector. Now, he and Digitide chief govt officer (CEO) Gurmeet Chahal are betting that the way forward for employment in India will not be fully human in any respect.
What they’re constructing is a blueprint for managing a brand new type of labour power. One which by no means clocks in, by no means calls in sick—and nonetheless must be led.
View Full Picture
Not only a gigafactory
“We’ve moved away from being a gigafactory of individuals,” Isaac mentioned. “Right now, we’re a structurally vital firm for India.”
That’s not a line for a pitch deck. Quess Corp’s operational footprint contains sustaining 100 hospitals with 21,000 beds, managing 200,000 telecom towers, and overseeing 390 million sq. ft of private and non-private actual property.
“These are population-scale numbers,” Isaac mentioned. “Not remoted figures from a single geography.”
That scale wasn’t all the time apparent. When Isaac based Quess in 2007, it was seen as one other contract staffing agency—helpful, low-margin and invisible within the bigger outsourcing narrative. That notion started to alter in 2012, when Fairfax invested ₹250 crore within the firm. “It gave us capital, sure,” Isaac mentioned. “But it surely additionally gave us room to assume past headcount.”
The subsequent inflection got here in 2016 with Quess’ preliminary public providing (IPO), adopted rapidly by a ₹870 crore institutional placement. Isaac used the proceeds to amass companies like Tata Enterprise Help Companies, Allsec Applied sciences and MFX. The corporate that when deployed subject workers to consumer websites now had its personal tech capabilities and steadiness sheet power to broaden additional.
“We used public markets intentionally,” Isaac mentioned. “We raised cash, acquired the suitable corporations and used inventory as foreign money. That’s how we constructed a platform.”
However constructing scale wasn’t nearly capital. It was about redefining what Quess wished to be. The turning level, Isaac mentioned, was recognizing that Quess wasn’t simply inserting folks—it was quietly operating components of India’s nationwide infrastructure.
The turning level, Isaac mentioned, was recognizing that Quess wasn’t simply inserting folks—it was quietly operating components of India’s nationwide infrastructure.
By the early 2020s, the corporate’s enterprise prolonged properly past staffing. Its groups had been operating back-end operations for banks, managing airport terminals and coordinating logistics for big public programmes.
“Individuals don’t see our brand,” Isaac mentioned. “But when the lights keep on and the community holds, there’s a superb likelihood our persons are behind it.”
With the 2025 demerger and the beginning of Digitide, Quess lastly made that shift specific. It not simply staffed tasks. It delivered them.
The org chart: Rewired
“Initially, it regarded like AI would possibly devour our tech enterprise,” Isaac mentioned. “However over time, we realized it was an enabler.”
That realization didn’t come from a white paper or a keynote. It got here from watching patterns unfold inside the corporate. By 2020, Quess had acquired a number of mid-sized companies. That gave the corporate the supply infrastructure throughout enterprise course of administration and data know-how (IT) providers. However what hadn’t but clicked was how software program may change how that infrastructure operated.
“AI wasn’t changing us,” Isaac mentioned. “It was exhibiting us a greater method to scale what we already did.”
The extra they regarded, the extra the overlaps grew to become apparent. Software program brokers had moved from pilot to manufacturing.
They had been filtering resumes, deciding mortgage compensation priorities and guiding name centre brokers via complicated conversations. What started as a query—“Ought to we add AI?”—grew to become one thing nearer to an crucial: How deep can we go?
“We determined to go all in,” Isaac mentioned.
Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, former chairman and managing director of Cognizant India, sees this as a second of re-imagination, not iteration. “The present structural shifts in know-how demand a complete rewiring of the enterprise, working and monetary fashions,” he mentioned. “Not simply Quess—each progress firm should ask: if we had been to construct this once more from scratch, how would we do it?”
That meant reorganizing the corporate, separating the AI-intensive operations right into a standalone entity, and giving it capital, independence, and a transparent mandate. Digitide was born.
Inside Digitide, the logic of the enterprise was refactored round a plan Chahal now calls the three-by-three-by-three. “Three income objectives. Three core verticals. Three service traces,” he mentioned. The verticals: insurance coverage, healthcare and monetary providers. The providers: digital engineering, analytics and enterprise course of administration. “It helped us focus,” Chahal mentioned. “We knew the place to construct, the place to purchase and what to stroll away from.”
What adopted wasn’t an AI lab or a splashy proof of idea. It was construction: human brokers guided by software program brokers; algorithms deciding collections routes; agent Nikki quietly monitoring worker morale. It wasn’t about chasing automation. It was about management—about doing extra with the group already in place.
Meet the listening officer
View Full Picture
Digitide doesn’t simply deploy AI behind the scenes. It provides a few of its brokers names, titles and really actual duties.
Take Nikki, the chief listening officer. Managers throughout the corporate use her to remain forward of attrition. “If I’m managing 60 folks, I can ask Nikki to examine in each three months,” Chahal mentioned. “She talks to workers and comes again with a easy report—these 4 folks want consideration.”
It’s not surveillance. It’s a workaround to the restrictions of scale. “Individuals speak in confidence to her,” Chahal added. “As a result of she’s not their boss.”
QBuddy works in another way. It sits inside name centres, the place brokers handle greater than a billion buyer interactions yearly. “That’s three each second,” Chahal mentioned. QBuddy listens in on reside conversations, pulls up buyer historical past and provides real-time cues: what to say subsequent, the right way to say it and when to decelerate if frustration builds.
View Full Picture
In collections, DigiColleqt helps 14,000 brokers cowl almost each postal code in India.
Not all of those instruments had been constructed from scratch. Some got here from partnerships. One instance stood out. “There was a startup with an excellent voice bot,” Chahal mentioned. “However they didn’t perceive collections—the right way to deal with objections, when to push, when to pause.”
Digitide didn’t dismiss the instrument. As a substitute, it layered its personal collections intelligence on high, white-labelled it and took it to shoppers within the US. “That they had tech. We had the area. Collectively it labored,” Chahal mentioned.
AI within the trenches
The impression of Digitide’s AI exhibits up much less on dashboards—and extra on the bottom.
Begin with collections. Digitide employs greater than 14,000 subject brokers, masking nearly each postal code in India. Till not too long ago, they’d begin the day with a static listing: names, addresses and no sense of precedence. “We used to offer them a printed listing,” Chahal mentioned. “Now, DigiColleqt ranks the day based mostly on who’s most definitely to pay.”
View Full Picture
If an agent’s already within the neighbourhood, the app factors out who else may be value knocking on. It doesn’t simply kind visits—it decides, too. Say somebody provides to settle a ₹1,000 debt for ₹900—no cellphone calls, no delays. “Earlier, the agent would name for approval,” Chahal mentioned. “Now, the system checks the thresholds and clears it straight away.”
That mixture—higher routing, sooner closure—has modified how the job will get carried out.
Hiring has shifted, too. The early phases of screening, as soon as handed to junior recruiters, now undergo AI agents educated by senior leaders. Candidates schedule interviews on their very own time—generally late at evening—and the bot conducts them with out bias, with out burnout. “A candidate can do the interview at 11pm,” Chahal mentioned. “And the AI scores them pretty.”
In payroll, the place Digitide processes 15 million payslips a yr, AI runs within the background. It catches a mistake earlier than somebody’s pay hits their account. That’s what issues.
View Full Picture
Throughout all three areas—collections, hiring and payroll—the adjustments aren’t about changing folks. “The persons are nonetheless within the loop,” Chahal mentioned. “However AI provides them again the time to focus the place it counts.”
Additionally Learn | Mint Primer: A robot for every 3 humans: What happens to us?
From vendor to rival
For a lot of its historical past, Quess supported the giants of Indian outsourcing, supplying staffing muscle to corporations like Infosys, Cognizant and Tech Mahindra. That’s not the case.
“We’re now stepping into $50-100 million RFPs (request for proposals),” Chahal mentioned. “5 years in the past, we weren’t even a part of the dialog.”
Digitide doesn’t pitch like a conventional IT providers agency. It provides full-stack supply fashions with AI inbuilt from day one. And it doesn’t want to guard legacy income, which provides it pricing flexibility. “We are able to go right into a $10 million deal and say we’ll do it for $7 million—with effectivity backed by AI,” Chahal mentioned. “That’s new cash for us.”
Pace is one other benefit. “We don’t have outdated platforms to defend,” Chahal added. “We’re constructing clear.”
Ramamoorthy sees this agility as a critical benefit. “Smaller, nimbler corporations can leapfrog incumbents as a result of they’re not burdened by legacy,” he mentioned. “Legacy is poison—particularly throughout high-velocity change.”
That mentioned, bigger gamers aren’t out of the sport, he continued. “They’ve the cash, the consumer entry, and the ecosystem relationships to catch up quick—in the event that they transfer with self-discipline.”
Past headcount
That pitch isn’t summary. It’s operational. AI cuts unit prices. Subject brokers shut extra calls. Recruiters spend much less time on handbook screening. Name centre brokers deal with extra instances, with fewer escalations.
“We’re delivering outcomes—not simply hours,” Chahal careworn. “We’ve stopped speaking about headcount. It’s the structure that issues now.”
That, Chahal believes, will matter greater than headcount within the years forward.
Digitide at present employs 55,000 folks. By the point it triples income, from $342 million in 2024-25 to the projected $1 billion in 2028-29, its headcount is anticipated to develop by solely 70%—to round 95,000. That leaner curve lifts income per worker, from about $6,200 now to just about $11,000 by 2028-29.
The mathematics displays deeper structural change. Right now, 78% of Digitide’s income comes from conventional BPO providers. That share will fall to 60% by 2029, as information analytics and tech-led platforms develop from 22% to 40%. Geography is altering too: 64% of Digitide’s income continues to be home.
In 5 years, Chahal expects a 50:50 international combine, with extra work coming from shoppers within the US and Center East. “That alone pushes up realization per worker,” he mentioned.
Digitide already has operations within the Philippines and the Center East, with new builds underway in Canada and Latin America.
And whereas AI is more and more embedded throughout service traces, Chahal attracts a transparent distinction: Solely 3% of income is from absolutely autonomous workflows—AI main end-to-end. One other 9% comes from hybrid fashions the place AI guides the work however folks nonetheless shut it out.
The margin impression of these layers, he added, is already seen in consumer renewals and deal sizes.
AI is the lever making this doable. Routine duties—information entry, primary help, rote collections—are more and more dealt with by software program brokers like QBuddy and DigiColleqt. Human workers are shifting upstream, into client-facing roles, course of redesign, and problem-solving.
The classroom in Indore
The shift can also be reshaping how Digitide prepares its workforce. The corporate has embedded an AI-focused curriculum into undergraduate programmes in cities like Indore and Coimbatore. College students who full the coursework obtain a assured interview.
A kind of programmes is operating in a authorities school on the outskirts of Indore. Inside a modest classroom with plastic chairs and a dusty whiteboard, final-year college students find out how AI instruments like QBuddy and DigiColleqt work, not simply technically, however in actual operational flows. “They’ve by no means heard of GPT,” mentioned a Digitide coach. “However they perceive subject collections. After we present them the AI’s logic, they get it instantly.”
Internally, each worker is anticipated to finish 52 hours of coaching yearly, with incentives for many who go additional.
“We’re not relying on the expertise pipeline,” Chahal mentioned. “We’re creating our personal via embedded programmes and steady studying.”
Constructing the invisible
Digitide is, in some ways, Isaac’s most complicated creation—the primary time he’s needed to construct methods that might someday make components of his personal legacy redundant. It’s a guess on software program in an organization constructed on staffing. It’s a problem to incumbents in a sector he as soon as equipped. It’s a reinvention that forces him to reexamine the values that obtained him right here.
“The know-how will preserve shifting,” he mentioned. “However management has to maneuver with conscience.”
That, greater than anything, defines what Isaac is attempting to construct subsequent: an organization that understands what it’s breaking, even because it builds one thing new.
In a rustic the place employment has lengthy meant paperwork, uniforms and a each day punch-in, Isaac is now constructing one thing much less seen—however no much less consequential.
