EXL CEO Rohit Kapoor: AI Triples Opportunities for BPM Growth

Today, 45 percent of EXL’s revenue comes from running client operations, while the remaining 55 percent focuses on managing, storing, and governing data, building analytical models, applying machine learning, and embedding AI into workflows.

“The business opportunity for us has exploded by more than three times,” Kapoor said in the interview. He also discussed investments in IT capabilities, employee retraining, and the opportunities ahead.

EDITED EXCERPTS:

While IT services firms continue to see a mixed demand environment, is the picture any different for BPM(Business Process Management), given that AI is now being embedded directly into business operations?

The last two years for EXL have been phenomenal. We’ve been growing double digits organically.

Most of the previous interventions that came in, whether it was mobility, whether it was cloud, basically required you to understand a company’s platform and systems and technology, but didn’t really focus so much on the process side or on the workflow side.

But with AI, this is the first time that that contextual knowledge and understanding of the operation, understanding of the workflow, the domain knowledge is critical. So, we are finding this to be a really, beneficial time for us.

AI is a tailwind. It opens a huge amount of opportunity for us. And the total addressable market for EXL has gone up by more than three times. So, the business that we are chasing, that opportunity set has exploded by more than three times. So, it’s a great time for us.

Do you think BPM players have effectively cracked the analytics dimension? The tech–data–AI offering seems to be working well for Genpact, Firstsource, and EXL…

I do think those players that invested in data analytics got a leg up. If you look at EXL, we have 45 percent of our business where we run operations for clients. But then 55 percent of the business that we do with clients is all around helping them manage, store, access, and govern their data, build analytical models, apply machine learning, and then apply AI into the workflow.

And this knowledge and experience that we had in terms of data analytics allowed us to pivot on AI very quickly. And there are two fundamental reasons for that. When we were doing analytics, we were already doing the querying on data. And so, we were already writing algorithms and building programs and building models that would try and derive insight from the data. So, we were very familiar with how to use data, how to build these models. And AI in particular requires an iterative style of being able to leverage that insight from data and make the business outcome real.

So, this knowledge and mastery over data and the ability to correctly apply AI, that’s what generates the ROI for the clients.

But don’t forget, the operations side is also very important because that’s where the domain knowledge resides. And the way we think about it is, it’s the combination of domain knowledge, the mastery of data, and the application of AI that you need to kind of orchestrate and bring together that creates a difference.

But to sustain this kind of momentum, would you also need to significantly strengthen your platform engineering and even IT capabilities on that side?

Oh, absolutely. I think having a big bench strength of technological engineering capabilities is critical.

So today, we have almost 6,000 people out of the 60,000 employees, who are trained and proficient in terms of using AI technologies, using data management techniques, integrating this into the workflow.

We have also hired a lot of talent from the outside. And the last piece is we’ve been beefing up our program for bringing in new talent from colleges and taking in people who’ve got the right kind of aptitude and then building training programs for them so that they can kind of be part of the organization.

Capgemini buying WNS was one of the biggest consolidation deals in the BPM space. Do you see scope for more such consolidation opportunities?

I do think there will be likely more consolidation in the BPM space. Recently, Thrive Capital, which is a venture capital firm, has created Thrive Holdings. So, they’re going to be buying companies which do services work. And they want to apply AI into those services companies and that’s an approach that they want to take.

You also have other situations where you’re going to have this combination of AI being applied to services companies which have been laggards and which haven’t really been able to grow and build their businesses.

It’s no longer a competition of BPM companies with BPM companies and IT companies with IT companies and call center companies with call center companies. The competition set goes across and now you’ve got new players.

We have operations with us, data and analytics, and we have AI and we can bring all of that together for our clients.

You’re guiding to double-digit revenue growth this year—do you expect that momentum to carry into next year as well?

The data and AI portion of our business today is 55 percent of our revenue- that’s growing at 17 percent. So, in the third quarter it grew at 17 percent year-on-year. So, that’s becoming bigger part of our business. So if you can grow that piece at that kind of a pace we certainly think the whole company can grow in double-digit.

Do you see a convergence taking place, with you moving deeper into IT services while IT players expand into BPM?

We have no ambition of trying to do what IT services firms do well. So like application development and maintenance or for them to write software code to build a program.

What we want to do is focus on how we can help enterprises embed AI in the workflow and get a real tangible business benefit and an outcome and an ROI.

Can you walk us through how your workforce will look like in the era of AI and agentic AI?

I think one of the trends that we are already seeing, and this is visible over the last two or three years, is our revenue growth is in double digits, and our employee growth is in single digits. So, what that means is that the revenue per employee is increasing, and that trend is likely to continue to accelerate as we go forward.

Do you believe that the industry will continue to hire in big numbers like before?

If you see the talent pool base, the talent that is required for AI and for data — that’s in short supply. So, there’s a shortage of people, and we would hire as many as we can to kind of build that capability.

On the other hand, there are going to be employees who are doing the legacy and the traditional work — those people must transition over to doing these new skill sets or being able to apply some of the new skill sets in their existing roles. And those who will make that transition, I think they’ll still be productive and they’ll be useful. But those people who are not going to be using some of these newer technologies and capabilities — I think their roles will become redundant.

Would you describe this as a renaissance of sorts for the BPM industry?

Yes, I think it is. It is a second leg up for the BPM industry. In the past, most of the decision-making used to happen on technology by the CIO and the CDO. Now, the decision-making is really happening with the COO and the CEO. And it’s much more of a business decision. And the use of technology is a part of it, but the overarching piece of it is, how do I change my business? And how do I modernize my business? And how do I make it easier for my clients? And that requires that domain knowledge and that processing understanding, which the BPM companies have.

Looking ahead to 2026, have clients begun discussing their tech budgets? Are you anticipating any macro-related headwinds?

The US economy is doing quite well. There’s no real fear of a recession in the US economy. It’s stable. If you look at the quarterly earnings in the third quarter, it’s not only the MAG 7 (Magnificent Seven technology stocks), it’s everybody else that has done well.

And as you keep getting this productivity benefit from AI, the level of investment in technology, the level of investment in using AI into the workflow — that will likely continue.

As BPM firms like yours increasingly take on end-to-end operations, does that shift push IT providers toward more of an ecosystem-orchestrator role rather than a traditional systems-integrator role?

Yes. So, in the past, for example, if somebody came to us and said, you know, change my customer journey and my process, we would make that change to the process. We wouldn’t really touch the technology, but we would change the different ways in which things were being handled. Then it was like making the change to the technology and put the algorithm in the technology and into the process and bring that together. And so, we did that.

Now we are seeing companies come to us, let’s say on the contact center side, and they’re saying: you decide the technology, you decide the cloud, you decide the algorithm, you decide the customer journey, and just give us a complete package and handle this for us on an ongoing basis.

I think we are going to see a lot more of complete outsourcing of that function, which includes the cloud, it includes the technology platform, it includes the application layer, it includes the model, and it includes the service, and it includes the human-in-the-loop — completely kind of being put in there. So, think of it as the full stack from cloud, platform, application, service, and strategic direction of where we need to take that.

So, you’re effectively eating IT’s lunch?

Well, I think it’s going to be in areas where we are controlling and managing this for our clients, yeah, kind of doing the full end stack. And there is an overlap with that, you’re right. So, we will be going into those areas.

Does this also imply that we should expect greater IP creation from you going forward?

Yes, I think IP creation has become really, critical. And all these patents are all around the application of AI. And therefore, the IP level is increasing very, very rapidly.