Anthropic’s slick new Claude Cowork plugins have unleashed panic in India’s massive IT engine room, sending stocks into a 6% nosedive on February 4, 2026.
Market Chaos
India’s Nifty IT index cratered 6.3%, its ugliest drop since March 2020, with every one of its 10 stocks bleeding red. Infosys spearheaded the rout, plunging 7.3% from its prior close, amid frenzied trading volume topping 5.5 million shares.
TCS shed 5.8%, HCLTech tumbled 5.1%, and Wipro eased 3.9% mirroring global jitters after U.S. and European software names tanked overnight. This rout erased billions in market cap from the $283 billion sector, where staffing armies for client gigs has long fueled profits.
Plugin Powerhouse
Anthropic rolled out these agentic plugins last Friday for its Claude Cowork, supercharging automation in legal reviews, sales pitches, marketing campaigns, and data crunching.
No longer just for coders, these tools let businesses plug in custom workflows, slashing the need for human labor in routine tasks like testing and development. Analysts warn this hits India’s labor-heavy model square on, as clients swap vendor hordes for AI speed.
Expert Alarm
Said Systematix Group analyst Ambrish Shah.
As Indian enterprises integrate Claude for critical coding workflows, dependency on large vendor teams may decline, squeezing billable hours and margins.
Outlook Shift
Short-term pain looks baked in, with Gartner eyeing India’s IT spend ballooning 10.6% to $176 billion in 2026 on AI and data centers.
However, giants like Infosys must pivot fast to embrace AI reskilling, hybrid models blending human oversight with Claude’s 50% productivity kicks or risk margin erosion. The smart money bets on survivors who ride the wave, not fight it, turning disruption into dominance.
