But at the same time, rapidly improving automation technology is allowing software to carry out routine IT support work and repetitive back office tasks previously performed by humans – the very tasks global companies originally outsourced to India to take advantage of cheaper labour.

In February, Cognizant’s CFO said it would “aggressively” employ automation to “optimise” its services. Meanwhile, India’s third-largest IT firm, Infosys, said automation allowed it to shift 9,000 workers from low-skill jobs to more advanced projects, like machine learning and artificial intelligence, last year. Its competitor Wipro redeployed 3,200 in 2016, and predicts it will move another 4,500 this year.

Yet this has been accompanied by a significant slowing in hiring. IT body Nasscom’s annual review predicted a 20-to-25% reduction in jobs in the industry over the next three years.

“Cognizant has not conducted any layoffs,” a Cognizant spokesperson said. “New machines and technologies are about helping cut costs, improve efficiencies, and increase sophistication in building and delivering services. They are not about altogether replacing the human element, but about elevating the role people play and the value they bring to their roles.”

But it can be hard to pinpoint exactly whose jobs have been lost to automation. Researchers in the UK, for example, have shown that some roles in today’s global economy are more at risk than others.

Ravi, whose name has been changed, worked as a software tester – a role particularly vulnerable to automated takeover. "In testing, already it has been introduced and it's coming in very fast,” he says. "If a job requires four manual testers, automation can reduce it to one.”