300 million white-collar jobs will be lost to AI over 5 years, warns ex-Flipkart COO
At Bengaluru Tech Summit 2025, Nitin Seth, former Flipkart COO and now Incedo CEO, also suggested that succeeding in the AI age will hinge on strengthening enduring human abilities.
With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), the age of stable jobs is fading, believes Nitin Seth, Co-founder and CEO of data science and technology services company Incedo, and former COO of Flipkart.
At Bengaluru Tech Summit 2025, the entrepreneur and author of Human Edge in the AI Age warned that the acceleration in AI adoption brings with it a severe and unavoidable disruption in employment. He estimated that 35% to 50% of existing jobs could disappear within 15 years—a figure that translates to nearly two billion roles worldwide.
“In the next five years, 300 million white-collar jobs will be lost, 30 million blue-collar jobs will be lost. So for every single blue-collar job lost, 10 white-collar jobs will be lost. If you look 15 years [ahead], you are looking at 1.8 billion. These are big, big numbers,” he noted in a session titled 'Navigating Disruption with Purpose and Integrity'.
While past technological revolutions eventually created more jobs than they destroyed, Seth believes this time is different because AI targets cognitive and professional work rather than physical labour. He noted that even hybrid 'human plus AI' roles may diminish. The consequence is a narrowing of the traditional career ladder and a growing mismatch between the skills people have and the opportunities available.
The shift, then, is less about using smarter tools and more about how humans work, create, and adapt.
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New business models
Seth sees an emerging landscape that favours agility, creativity, and ownership. This gives startups an edge over legacy businesses as they are far more adept at pivoting to AI native business models.
“It’s a huge disruption for legacy enterprises. The legacy enterprises have a big task ahead of them. My thesis is that it’s not going to be easy. This is going to be an opportunity for hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs,” remarked Seth, who has spent more than 25 years working at the intersection of consulting, analytics, and technology.
Entrepreneurship in this context does not refer only to tech startups. It includes individuals who reimagine services, industries, and community needs using AI as a foundation, he clarified.
Human edge
The future Seth described is not simply a race between humans and machines. It is a call for a deeper return to qualities that once defined human advancement. He suggested that succeeding in the AI age will hinge on strengthening enduring human abilities.
“Succeeding in the AI age is not about learning AI tools. That’s the easiest thing to do… What you really need is to double down on the timeless human skills, which were always there, which will (always) be there,” he explained.
Edited by Kanishk Singh