During Q1 FY27 earnings calls, senior executives at Infosys, HCLTech, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) agreed that small language models (SLMs) are the technology moving the needle with enterprise clients, particularly in regulated sectors like banking and financial services, due to GPU supply constraints and lower operational costs. Gaurav Vasu, Founder and CEO of UnearthInsight, stated that no banks will adopt an LLM model because institutions handling sensitive data cannot risk data leaking through a public large language model. While a Deloitte report shows more than 80% of enterprises in India are interested or investing in AI initiatives, Vasu estimates enterprise-wide AI adoption globally remains under 10%. According to Marvel.ai, high-traffic enterprise deployments spend $50,000+ monthly on LLM APIs, whereas an equivalent SLM workload costs between $3,000 and $8,000. Infosys CEO Salil Parekh said SLMs are gaining good traction in banking, built around the company's Finacle platform, where a smaller parameter set brings down running costs and improves token efficiency.