"The entire model was built on one value proposition: Indian developers cost a fraction of their American counterparts" [Indian developers cost a fraction]
The quote directly names the wage-arbitrage mechanism that sustained India's outsourcing dominance. The article then shows AI collapsing that mechanism by making labor cost irrelevant relative to electricity cost.
Reasoning from this article
The article documents a structural inversion: the same labor-cost advantage that made India the world's back office is now a liability as AI makes human labor cost negligible. This is not a cyclical downturn but a model collapse. The evidence spans from Hunar.AI's 65→45→25 headcount trajectory to TCS workforce shrinkage and Citrini's 2028 scenario, all pointing to the same dynamic: when AI marginal cost approaches zero, the entire value proposition of offshore labor arbitrage evaporates.