In AI era, IT sector employees facing an uncertain future
A heavy, brooding charcoal-grey cloud hovers over a multi-storey commercial building standing tall near the service road of the busy Vyttila-Edappally bypass in Kochi on
A heavy, brooding charcoal-grey cloud hovers over a multi-storey commercial building standing tall near the service road of the busy Vyttila-Edappally bypass in Kochi on a Tuesday morning. Down in the basement of the building sits Fatima*, a 35-year-old woman, on the granite steps at the entrance of what once used to be her workplace. The glass door remains shut behind her, and Fatima stares at an uncertain future, her forced smile failing to hide the unease within. A senior medical coder at CorroHealth Infotech Private Ltd., a U.S.-based health-care analytics company, Fatima has worked from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. for the past four years. Her routine changed on July 3, 2026 as the company shut its operations in Kerala, a decision that shocked around 800 employees. “Nowadays, some of us come here in the morning, sign an attendance register arranged by the district labour office, sit here for some time and leave. We are just following the instructions of government officials. We really don’t think the company is going to reverse its decision,” a disappointed Fatima says. “It all feels like a nightmare now,” she says, recalling the “lay-off” horror on July 3, 2026. “None of us could believe what the HR (human resources) representatives said. Some of us even felt choked and rushed out of the office for some fresh air. By the time we tried to re-enter, our access was blocked,” she remembers. The company retrenched the employees in its Kochi and Kozhikode offices, citing operational losses, in a move that triggered several uneasy questions on the job market, labour laws and perceived threats from artificial intelligence (AI). In its ‘Separation and Full and Final Settlement Letter’ sent to the employees affected, CorroHealth states that it was “conducting a workforce restructuring exercise due to a sustained downturn in the company’s Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) vertical.” In medical coding parlance, HCC refers to the grouping of similar diagnoses into one related category to be used in a risk-adjustment payment model. The company paid a compensation amounting to salaries for two and a half months to the employees while terminating their services. The retrenchment has snowballed into a major controversy with both the Kerala government and the Opposition political parties terming it illegal. Similar crisis Just a week after the CorroHealth incident, a similar crisis played out in another Kochi-based venture, Talrop Private Ltd., with its employees coming out against the abrupt shutdown of its “₹250-crore ecosystem company.” The closure of 21 start-ups operating under Talrop’s ecosystem has left over 300 employees jobless. The company announced the closure by claiming it was “not built for the AI era,” triggering further questions about the impact of the cutting-edge technology across sectors, especially in the information technology (IT) industry.
The BriefWire