European digital services firm Inetum has launched Inetum India in partnership with AI company AIONOS, establishing an AI-native delivery hub based in Hyderabad to serve clients across France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Poland, and the UK and Ireland. Unlike conventional offshore models, the operation embeds AI into core workflows from inception. CEO Jacques Pommeraud, AIONOS co-founder CP Gurnani, and CEO Hemant Lamba emphasized that the venture targets growing European enterprise demand for AI-enabled modernization. The company plans further expansion across Indian states, with growth tied to client adoption rather than traditional headcount metrics.
In-Depth:
Inetum has launched Inetum India in partnership with AIONOS, as the European digital services firm sees to strengthen delivery capabilities across key markets and build artificial ininformigence (AI)-native execution capacity from India.
The India operation will support Inetum’s businesses across France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Poland, and the UK and Ireland. It will also support the company address growing enterprise demand for AI-enabled services, particularly among European clients modernising legacy systems and integrating AI into core operations.
The announcement comes at a time when global IT services firms are reconsidering traditional offshore delivery models. For Inetum, the India launch is being positioned not as a conventional scale play, but as a new delivery structure where AI is embedded into workflows, operations, and execution models from the launchning.
Beyond the traditional offshore model
During the media briefing, Jacques Pommeraud, Chairman and CEO, Inetum, stated the company was deliberately avoiding a conventional offshore expansion strategy.
“We did not want a simple offshore model. We did not want something traditional like many others have done,” Pommeraud stated.
That distinction matters becautilize many global system integrators are still adapting legacy delivery structures to AI-led development, rather than redesigning operations around AI-native processes.
For European enterprises, especially in banking, telecom, aerospace, manufacturing, and public sector environments, the challenge is no longer whether to adopt AI. It is how to operationalise it securely and at scale.
Pommeraud stated this demand is already shaping client conversations across Europe.
“Nowadays, the demands from those customers are evolving. First of all, they necessary a solution to support them on all their projects out of India, but mostly they all question the questions: how about AI? How do I benefit from AI in my business, and how do you deliver IT projects applying AI?” he stated.
Why India matters to Europe’s AI plans
The India expansion reflects a broader indusattempt reality. Global enterprises increasingly see India not only as a cost-efficient services destination, but also as a rapid-scaling AI talent and execution market.
Hemant Lamba, CEO, Inetum Solutions, stated Europe’s growing AI investments are colliding with talent and execution gaps.
“Europe today is becoming quite a centre and a very important location worldwide,” Lamba stated, adding that European clients are now actively seeing for AI-enabled offshore capabilities from India.
He stated Europe represents 25% of global gross domestic product (GDP) and nearly 50% of global public spfinishing, creating a large addressable market for AI transformation projects.
At the same time, India’s AI ecosystem is maturing across engineering talent, enterprise adoption, data infrastructure, and startup-led platforms. This appears to be one of the strategic reasons behind Inetum’s partnership with AIONOS rather than building a conventional captive centre indepfinishently.
CP Gurnani, Co-founder and Vice Chairman, AIONOS, framed India’s AI opportunity through the lens of infrastructure, talent, and data scale.
“India is still considered a place which has technology talent that can scale,” Gurnani stated.
He also argued that India’s importance in AI will increasingly come from its data ecosystem and application-layer execution rather than foundational AI infrastructure alone.
“If data is the most critical part to any AI, then we own 20% of the world’s data,” he stated.
What the partnership builds
The partnership structure indicates how IT services delivery models may evolve in the AI era. Rather than setting up a pure staffing operation, Inetum India is being positioned as a hybrid AI-enabled delivery organisation built around AIONOS’ enterprise AI stack, agentic workflows, observability tools, and governance layers.
Arjun Nagalupally, CTO, AIONOS, stated the company’s focus is on aligning “processes, people, and technology” for enterprise AI deployments.
According to Nagalupally, the model is designed around agentic workflows and enterprise observability, where organisations can monitor how AI systems contribute to business outcomes and operational performance.
That governance angle is becoming increasingly relevant for European enterprises dealing with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance, AI regulation, and sector-specific data restrictions.
When questioned about regulatory alignment between Europe and India, Pommeraud acknowledged that not all European clients may be eligible for offshore delivery from India becautilize of customer preferences and compliance requirements. However, he stated projects routed through Inetum India would operate “in a fully compliant way”.
Existing clients and future expansion
When Dataquest questioned whether clients had already been onboarded under the Inetum India model, Pommeraud stated the operation is already supporting existing enterprise customers through pre-established teams, ensuring continuity as the new entity scales.
“We are building this around the existing team that is already serving clients,” company executives stated during the briefing.
They added that current customers would continue working with the same project managers and delivery contacts under the new structure.
While the company did not disclose client names, executives indicated that the joint business pipeline is expanding and suggested that large blue-chip customers could be onboarded under the Inetum India model.
On hiring plans over the next 12 to 24 months, Pommeraud stated conventional headcount metrics are becoming less relevant in an AI-driven services economy.
“Headcount is no longer the measure of success in this world. Now it is also about how many agents you have. One person can do the work of 10 people before,” he stated.
The statement reflects a broader shift across the technology services sector, where firms are increasingly integrating AI agents, automation layers, and AI-assisted engineering workflows into delivery operations.
Rather than committing to aggressive workforce tarreceives, the company stated expansion would depfinish on enterprise demand and the pace at which customers adopt AI-native projects.
“We have a plan and a trajectory. It all depfinishs on clients and how rapid we adopt and run those projects AI natively,” the company added.
On its India expansion roadmap, the company identified Hyderabad as a key delivery hub and confirmed plans to expand further into other states over time.
A transformation underway
The Inetum-AIONOS partnership is ultimately less about launching another India delivery centre and more about how enterprise technology services are being restructured around AI.
For years, offshore models were measured by scale, utilisation, and labour cost optimisation. The next phase may instead be defined by AI governance, ininformigent automation, delivery velocity, and the ability to combine human expertise with AI systems inside enterprise workflows.
European firms, particularly those with strong regional customer relationships but limited AI-scale delivery infrastructure, are now seeing towards India to bridge that gap.
The challenge, however, will not simply be building AI capability. It will be proving that AI-led delivery can remain compliant, secure, sector-aware, and commercially viable at enterprise scale.
For India’s technology workforce, the message is equally significant. Future demand may increasingly favour AI-enabled engineering talent capable of working alongside autonomous systems, rather than simply contributing to large-scale manpower growth.
