India’s AI Future Sovereign Infrastructure and Innovation at Scale
20 Feb 2026 16:00h - 17:00h
India’s AI Future Sovereign Infrastructure and Innovation at Scale
Session at a glance
Summary
This panel discussion focused on India’s sovereign AI capabilities and the country’s strategy for building AI infrastructure to serve both domestic needs and the Global South. The session began with the launch of a sovereign AI research report by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapetam, followed by a panel featuring industry leaders and academics discussing key challenges and opportunities.
The panelists identified several critical pillars for India’s AI sovereignty. Sunil Gupta from Yotta emphasized that compute infrastructure, particularly GPU availability, represents the most fundamental challenge, noting that while India has made progress with thousands of GPUs, the country will eventually need millions to serve its 1.4 billion population effectively. The government’s shared compute facility model, which has grown to 38,000 GPUs with 20,000 more announced, demonstrates a successful collaborative approach between public and private sectors.
Kalyan Kumar from HCL Software highlighted the importance of building comprehensive data platforms and vector databases, emphasizing that India must transition from being a service provider to becoming a product builder with its own intellectual property. Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan stressed interoperability across all AI layers as crucial for meaningful participation and scalability, advocating for collaboration between academic institutions and industry partners.
Brandon Mello from GenSpark identified adoption challenges, noting that 95% of AI pilots fail to reach production due to ROI invisibility, data compliance friction, and lack of executive sponsorship. The discussion revealed consensus that India’s competitive advantage lies in collaboration, multilingual capabilities, and solving real-world problems for the masses rather than creating technological novelties. The panelists agreed that maintaining human-centric AI development while building sovereign capabilities represents India’s path forward in the global AI landscape.
Keypoints
Major Discussion Points:
– Infrastructure and Compute Requirements for Sovereign AI: The panel extensively discussed India’s need for massive GPU infrastructure to support AI development. Sunil Gupta emphasized that while India has talent, data, and market demand, the critical gap is compute capacity – noting that India needs millions of GPUs to serve its 1.4 billion population, compared to the current thousands available.
– Collaboration and Interoperability as India’s Strategic Advantage: Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan highlighted interoperability at every layer as key to India’s AI sovereignty, enabling participation, alternatives, and scale-out capabilities. The discussion emphasized breaking silos between institutions, languages, and domains to create collaborative ecosystems.
– Data Sovereignty and Monetization: The conversation addressed the importance of data ownership, with references to the Prime Minister’s statement “jiska data uska adhikar” (whose data, their right). Panelists discussed building data catalogs, contracts, and platforms that allow data creators to maintain control and benefit from their contributions.
– AI Adoption Challenges and Production Readiness: Brenno Mello presented concerning statistics that 95% of AI pilots never reach production, citing three main barriers: ROI invisibility, data/compliance friction, and lack of executive sponsorship. The discussion focused on moving from pilots to real-world implementation.
– Skills Transformation and Talent Development: The panel addressed the need to shift from a “service-for-hire” model to building indigenous IP and research capabilities. Kalyan Kumar emphasized needing “fewer, smarter people” – engineers rather than just coders – and the importance of specialization over generalist education.
Overall Purpose:
The discussion aimed to chart India’s path toward AI sovereignty, focusing on building indigenous capabilities that serve both India and the Global South. The panel sought to identify key challenges, strategic advantages, and actionable solutions for establishing India as a leader in sovereign AI development while ensuring benefits reach the masses.
Overall Tone:
The discussion maintained an optimistic and collaborative tone throughout, characterized by constructive problem-solving and shared vision. Panelists demonstrated mutual respect and built upon each other’s ideas rather than debating. The tone was pragmatic yet ambitious, acknowledging current limitations while expressing confidence in India’s potential. There was a sense of urgency balanced with long-term strategic thinking, and the conversation remained focused on practical solutions and real-world impact rather than theoretical discussions.
Speakers
Speakers from the provided list:
– Speaker 1: Event moderator/host – responsible for introductions, transitions, and closing remarks
– Ankit Bose: Head of AI at NASCOM – leads AI initiatives for NASCOM and moderates the panel discussion
– Kalyan Kumar (KK): Chief Product Officer (CPO) at HCL Software – runs the software product business for HCL with focus on sovereign-by-design software products
– Sunil Gupta: Co-founder, MD, and CEO of Yotta – operates data center campuses and built Sovereign Cloud in India, manages thousands of NVIDIA GPU chips
– Brandon Mello: Founding GTM executive at GenSpark – works for a follow-up-based AI company focused on agentic AI for knowledge workers
– Ganesh Ramakrishnan/Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan: Professor from IIT Bombay – leads sovereign AI foundation model building efforts in India, part of a consortium of nine academic institutions
Additional speakers:
– Dr. Manisha V. Ramesh: Pro Vice Chancellor at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapetam – involved in the sovereign AI research report launch
– Dr. Shiva Ramakrishnan: Head of AI Safety Research Lab at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapetam – mentioned for the report launch
– Professor Suresh: From Amrita Vishwa Vidyapetam – participated in the report launch ceremony
– Mr. Bhaskar Gorti: EVP at Tata Communications – mentioned as a panelist but did not speak in the transcript
Full session report
Sovereign AI for India – Building Indigenous Capabilities for National and Global Impact
This panel discussion at the AI Impact Summit explored India’s strategic approach to developing sovereign artificial intelligence capabilities. The session began with the launch of a sovereign AI research report by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapetam and featured insights from industry leaders on the challenges and opportunities facing India’s AI ecosystem.
The Panelists
The discussion was moderated by Ankit Bose, Head of AI for NASCOM, and featured:
– Sunil Gupta from Yotta Data Services
– Kalyan Kumar from HCL Software ($1.5 billion revenue, 10,000 customers)
– Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan from IIT Bombay (who walked 3 kilometers due to traffic to reach the venue)
– Brandon Mello from GenSpark (which recently broke $200 million in ARR as the fastest-growing AI company)
– Bhaskar Gorti from Tata Communications was introduced but didn’t speak in the recorded portion
India’s AI Foundation: Strengths and Critical Gaps
India possesses many essential ingredients for AI success: a robust software services industry, thriving startup ecosystem, exceptional mathematical and engineering talent, and a massive domestic market of 1.4 billion smartphone users. However, as Sunil Gupta emphasized, the critical bottleneck remains compute infrastructure. When ChatGPT democratized AI globally, India found itself well-positioned in most areas except for the specialized GPU compute power that modern AI systems require.
The scale of the challenge is staggering. While India has progressed from virtually no GPU infrastructure to thousands of chips over two years, the ultimate requirement is measured in millions of GPUs. Individual companies like Meta or SpaceX deploy over one million GPUs, while India as a nation currently operates with tens of thousands. For voice-based AI systems crucial to India’s multilingual, mobile-first population, the infrastructure demands are unprecedented.
The government’s response through the India AI Mission has established a shared compute framework providing access to 38,000 GPUs, with an additional 20,000 announced by the Prime Minister during the summit. This public-private partnership model incentivizes private sector investment while subsidizing access for startups, academic institutions, and researchers.
Beyond Raw Compute: The Middle Layer Challenge
Kalyan Kumar highlighted the often-overlooked middle layer of the AI stack: data platforms, vector databases, and edge computing capabilities. As AI deployment becomes increasingly distributed, India needs sophisticated data infrastructure supporting real-time, localized AI applications. This includes building data catalogues, establishing data contracts, and creating foundations for data monetization.
Kumar also announced HCL’s joint venture with Foxconn called “India Chips Limited” for 16 and 32 nanometer fab manufacturing, representing a significant step toward hardware sovereignty.
Collaboration and the Consortium Model
Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan outlined India’s competitive advantage through interoperability and collaboration rather than competing solely on parameter count. While India’s current models operate at sub-500 billion parameters compared to global leaders approaching 5 trillion, the strength lies in collaborative, human-centric design principles.
The Bharat GPT consortium exemplifies this approach, bringing together nine academic institutions through a Section 8 not-for-profit company. With 60 full-time employees working alongside 100+ researchers and master’s students, the consortium develops multilingual models covering 22 Indian languages. Their work on mixture of experts architecture showed that Hindi-Marathi experts performed similarly, demonstrating the potential for efficient, localized AI solutions.
Professor Ganesh also mentioned his book “Samanway” and emphasized that interoperability at every layer encourages meaningful participation from diverse stakeholders while preventing vendor lock-in.
The Adoption Reality Check
Brandon Mello introduced a sobering statistic: 95% of AI pilots never reach production deployment. The primary barriers are organizational and economic, not technological. He identified three critical challenges:
1. ROI Invisibility: One-third of CFOs cannot quantify returns on AI investments, with only one in ten organizations possessing tools to measure AI project outcomes effectively.
2. Data and Compliance Friction: Different departments optimize for their own priorities rather than organizational outcomes, stretching implementation timelines from months to a year.
3. The Champion Problem: Insufficient executive sponsorship creates a lack of organizational momentum necessary for successful deployment.
The solution lies in focusing on real-world problems that demonstrably improve daily lives, consolidating rather than complicating existing workflows.
Data Sovereignty and Value Distribution
The panel discussed Prime Minister Modi’s statement referenced by Kalyan Kumar: “jiska data uska adhikar” (whose data, their right), emphasizing that data creators should maintain control and benefit from their contributions. This is particularly relevant given that India creates 20% of the world’s data but hosts only 3% domestically.
Building comprehensive data platforms requires sophisticated technical and legal infrastructure, including vector databases optimized for Indian languages and governance frameworks ensuring appropriate compensation for data contributors.
Skills Transformation: From Services to Innovation
Kumar made the provocative observation that India needs “fewer, smarter people”—engineers with systems thinking and research orientation rather than large teams of coders. This requires moving beyond the traditional “service-for-hire” model to create original intellectual property and conduct fundamental research.
NASCOM has committed to enabling 150,000 developers across India to become AI-ready within six months, recognizing the urgent need for transition to AI-enabled development practices. The organization is also rewriting technical education curricula (BTEC, MTEC, MCA, BCA) to create deeper specialization and research orientation.
Practical Success Stories
Several concrete examples demonstrate progress:
– Indian AI models (Sarvam, Socket, Bharat Gen) are being trained on Yotta’s infrastructure
– Bhashini migration from hyperscale cloud to sovereign cloud shows practical sovereignty implementation
– Indian models beating global benchmarks on India-specific use cases, such as OCR for handwritten notes in Indian languages
Human-Centric AI and Maintaining Agency
Professor Ganesh emphasized maintaining human agency in AI systems, warning against humans becoming “products, not even consumers” of AI systems. The solution involves ensuring transparency and observability at every layer, with AI models functioning as “glass boxes” rather than black boxes.
Different applications require different approaches: consumer AI operates on “give-to-get” models, enterprise AI requires robust governance, government AI must prioritize citizen service with accountability, and critical infrastructure demands air-gapped, private systems.
Strategic Imperatives Moving Forward
The discussion identified several key priorities:
1. Infrastructure Scaling: Continue accelerating from thousands to millions of GPUs required for population-scale deployment
2. Expanded Collaboration: Deepen the consortium model to include more industry partners
3. Skills Revolution: Fundamentally restructure educational approaches toward specialization and research capabilities
4. Practical Implementation: Focus on solutions that work across India’s linguistic diversity and integrate with existing digital infrastructure
Conclusion
The panel articulated a sophisticated approach to AI sovereignty that goes beyond technological nationalism. Success requires coordinated action across infrastructure development, skills transformation, and collaborative innovation while maintaining human agency and democratic values.
As emphasized throughout the discussion, India possesses the fundamental ingredients for AI leadership. The challenge lies in execution—scaling infrastructure, transforming education, fostering collaboration, and maintaining focus on real-world impact. NASCOM’s policy document on sovereign AI and AGI roadmap, along with continued feedback collection (referenced multiple times during the session), will help guide this strategic journey.
The consensus suggests that if executed effectively, India’s collaborative, human-centric approach to sovereign AI could provide a model for other nations seeking to develop indigenous capabilities while serving both domestic needs and the broader Global South.
Session transcript
Thank you. Thank you. hello and good afternoon everyone thank you for joining us for this session on sovereign AI for India before we begin the panel discussion again we are happy to announce that there will be a launch of the sovereign AI research report by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapetam may I invite the following representatives to kindly join us on stage first for the release of the report from Amrita we would like to invite pro vice chancellor Dr. Manisha V. Ramesh and if available head of the AI safety research lab Dr. Shiva Ramakrishnan and any other representatives from Amrita Vishwa Vidyapetam that you would like to invite on stage sir alright Alright, Professor Suresh and if we could please have you on stage I would like to invite Mr. Ankit Bose, Head NASCOM AI on stage as well We will Thank you so much Yeah, yeah, absolutely You can take a seat sir if you want Thank you Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. We now move into the panel discussion. To guide this conversation, we are joined by Mr. Ankit Bose, head NASCOM AI. Joining him today are our distinguished panelists, Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan from IT Bombay and Bharat Jain, Mr. Sunil Gupta, co -founder, MD, and CEO of Yotta, Mr. Bhaskar Gorti, EVP, Tata Communications, Mr. Kalyan Kumar, CPO, HCL Software, and Mr. Brenno Mello, founding GTM executive, GenSpark. Ankit, over to you. Professor Ganesh will be shortly joining us in two minutes. Thank you.
So hi everyone, I think we had a good launch and we have a very strong panel. So Ganesh was on the way and he is still stuck on the traffic, he is walking in. So meanwhile we start the discussion, I think, you know, happy to have a very strong panel. So why don’t we do this, we start with the introduction, right? I think Kalyan, we can start with your quick introduction. So Neil and then Bruno.
Yeah, hi, Kalyan Kumar, call me KK. I run the software product business for HCL, HCL Software. We are the largest India headquartered enterprise B2B software company with about 10 ,000 customers and about 1 .5 billion dollars of revenue. And very intricately involved in building software products which are sovereign by design.
Hello, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Sunil Gupta. I am co -founder and CEO of IOTA. So we run data center campuses. We have built Sovereign Cloud in India, which is running a whole lot of mission -critical government of India applications. Recently, we migrated Bhashini from a hyperscale cloud to our Sovereign Cloud. Our claim to fame in the last two years is that we have got thousands of NVIDIA GPU chips in India. And all the models which you are hearing getting launched in this summit, MITS, Sarvam model, IOT, Bombay’s Bharat Gen model or Socket model, they all have been trained on our GPU clusters, and now they are being made available to public use.
Thank you.
Hello. Good afternoon. My name is Brandon Mello. I work for Genspark .ai, a follow -up -based company. We have been around for about 10 months. We are the largest growing AI company right now in the world. We just broke $200 million in ARR. Our solution has been incredibly well -received. adopted in the market. It is our third largest market and our solution is to drive adoption from the bottom up by bringing agentic AI to the knowledge worker. Thanks for letting me be here.
Great, great, great. And hi, folks. I’m Ankit Bose. I head AI for NASCOM. So, whatever NASCOM does in AI something, I support that. I lead that, right? And we will be joined by Ganesh, who is from Bhadrajin. He’s leading the, you know, sovereign AI modern building effort in the country, right? So, I think meanwhile you join, let’s start. I think, Sunil, let me start with you, right? The first question I think I would want to ask after five days of immense brainstorming around, you know, AI for the country, AI for the world, right? You know, what is the top thing you say which, you know, India has to do, right, to build its sovereign capability, not only for the country, plus for the global south?
Yeah. Ankit, if I take everybody, Just two years or maybe two and a half years down the line, when Chad GPT got on world scene, basically AI capability came in consumer hands. A big debate happened in India’s obviously government circle, industry circle, telecom circle, technology circles everywhere. That while India has got everything which is needed to succeed in AI, like we have been software and services leaders for last three decades. We have a startup ecosystem. On skill set index of mathematics, science, engineering, we are always the best. As a market, we are literally close to 1 billion people carrying smartphones, creating consuming content. AI ultimately resulted to most of the cases, you know, some apps which will be giving some productivity to us.
So both on the demand side and the supply side, including data sets like India will have the best data sets available. So everything India has, but what India was not having at that time was compute. Because AI does not run. And regular data centers or regular CPU computes, it required this. specialized GPU computes. So I would say that the biggest problem and of course you have to take care of the entire stack models, data sets, applications, everything. But the core problem to solve for taking AI to the masses was that how do you make compute available in an abundant way so that we don’t think of that. That should become just a hygiene which is always available.
And that’s the problem we tried to solve. You know way back at that time Jensen was in India. I happened to get to meet him and he says we as NVIDIA are too committed to India. We can extend your parity allocation. We can give you engineering support, everything. But somebody has to take a step forward of not only putting your data centers and power and everything but you also need to put in chips and we will give you everything. And from there to now today we are running almost 10 ,000 chips. You know as I said majority of the models which you are hearing sovereign models getting launched in India. You know they have been trained on a GPU.
But the real thing I would say is start now. Many of these models are great, you must have heard Sarvam Modeller beating Gemini and ChatGPT on many of the match marks. And they are making them absolutely for India use cases like OCR, you know the handwritten notes and all that thing, how do you get convert and all that stuff. So these are real India purpose built use cases and models. When they start scaling, when they start getting adopted by masters, we have seen one UPI changed our lives. Imagine we have UPI in 50 different sectors in the country, 50 UPI movement will come into India. At that time, the number of GPUs required will be millions.
Today we are happy as a country, we have X thousand of GPUs. But if you as a single company like SpaceX or like Meta can have 1 million GPUs, India as a country require multiple million GPUs. So while we are working on all the upper layer of stacks and Indians are very good at that, models, data sets, applications. We need to solve this issue. We are taking care of infrastructure problems. We are taking care of railways and roadways and airports. We also need to create this digital infrastructure. We take care of that, make it available abundantly to every startup, every, you know, I would say academic community. We make it available at a very low price.
Government India AI machine is doing a human’s role. On one side, they have asked people like us, incentivized us to invest into the GPUs. But they are taking GPUs from us, putting their own money, putting their own subsidy and then giving it to Sarvams and IITs and sockets of the world. And they think now you make, you don’t have to bother about money. Just go and make India’s plastic model. And the result is to seem in two years, India has come a long way and we have a long way to go. Compute problem has to be solved.
Great. Thank you. Thank you, Sunil. Same question to you, KK. You know, what is the one thing you feel can add the edge, right? The whole.
When you look at sovereign and I think Minister of Electronics and IIT Vaishnavji, he was mentioning. The. Mr. talking the five layers layer stack right and that’s where if you what sunil mentioned is for a easier way i say i use the word infrastructure which can combine energy or the ping power uh cooling the whole stack so that’s that’s providing that layer and then explain the whole model piece i think as you train and when you start to deploy at scale a couple of things becoming very interesting so you need to start to also build a data stack data platforms vector dbs edge vector i personally think you can do as much centralization the way the data consumption model is going is going to highly get distributed going to go down into the edge correct so you need a very different kind of inferencing and those capabilities so you need a data layer something which uh which we are doing is very interesting outside of oracle and ibm uh the only other company which has all the patents for database is Ethier, because we acquired Actian.
So Actian owns the original patent of Ingress. And every derivative today, whether it is Postgres or every one of them is basically an Ingress query processor derivative, including SQL Server and others. Like that, we also acquired an asset from CWI in Netherlands. So we have a VectorDB, the original Vector engine. So we’ve been building a lot of those asset portfolio, HDB, now releasing a, in April we’re going to release a localized vector AI engine, which again can run on, because as the AI PCs become more and more, Edge becomes more and more, so building that. And building the data disciplines. I think that’s a very important layer. A lot of times what happens is we worry about infrastructure, and then we think about model, and then app.
The data platform is going to become very important, because as we’re building the data platform, the enterprise will only scale if you get your data. centric approach, data products, data contracts, data catalogs and those kind of things. Because finally the AI use case is going to be built on how good quality your data is. Yeah.
Great point. I think compute data, data stack for the country, I think very important. Let me come to Venu. Again, the same question, right? If India have to build a server AI for the country and Global South, what’s the top one thing you will say which will help the whole cause?
Yeah, so it’s interesting. MIT last year ran a big report and they said 95 % of AI pilots actually never made it to real production, right? So in my point of view, this is never really a tech problem. It’s really a production problem, right? So in my point of view, actually like when I look at a our solution, right, like we are able to deploy over thousands of companies in only eight weeks, right? So when I look at that, there’s really, it comes down to three reasons why this is happening in the industry, right? And the first one is what I call ROI invisibility, right? So when you look at companies right now, it’s really easy to get a budget for a pilot, right?
But what comes to the reality is can they get a budget to get the project done, right? So the data that I have to share with you guys, which is astonishing, is a third of CFOs really nowadays, they cannot quantify ROI inside of their organizations, right? And only one out of ten can actually have tools that can actually measure ROI, right? So. What ended up happening is whenever you talk to those organizations. right? Companies, and you ask, like, how are you actually going to measure productivity gains or how are you going to, like, they don’t have the answer, right? So it ends up, like, what’s the baseline? Like, they don’t have the answer, right? So whenever you bring to, like, the CFO to get that project approval, ends up on the project never getting approved and ends up on that cycle of, like, it ends up getting stuck into a pilot, right?
So when you look at what, you know, number two is, like, I think it’s data and trust and compliance friction, right? I think there’s a huge red tape in terms of what happens inside of organizations, right? I think that it’s very departmentalized, where, like, each part of the organization is trying to solve for each part of the department, right? So when I look at IT, it’s trying to solve for IT. Procurement is trying to solve for IT. Procurement is trying to solve for IT. Procurement is trying to solve for IT. procurement. Because no one’s really trying to solve that as an organization, the project ends up stalling. So something that can essentially take a few months to resolve ends up taking six months to a year.
And like I say in sales, time kills every deal. Last but not least, I think my third point is the champion problem. I think there’s a severe issue within organizations nowadays is there’s really no executive sponsorship. And whenever you don’t have executive sponsorship, especially for AI opportunities, deals never get approved. And people, especially at the bottom tier, they don’t understand what’s going on. And when there’s no clear alignment within the middle tier management, deals never get approved.
Great. I think let me summarize probably the three points that, you know, you need a close collaborated teams, right, with a single point of view with executive sponsorship. I think that will solve the adoption piece at least at last, right? Let me come to you, Professor Ganesh, right? Ganesh, I think what we are discussing is the, we have discussed a lot on AI for last five days for India, for globe, you know, and then we had three point of views. I asked them, give me one top thing. You heard probably from Breno and KK and then from, you know, Sunil was confused. What is that your top one take which India should do so that we can lead the seven race for the country and the globe?
I would suggest interoperability at every layer. I think it is also alluded to by earlier panelists. Interoperability encourages participation and in the words of PSA, if you are there in our Bharat, genesision is a meaningful participation right interoperability also helps you present alternatives because there is no one size fits all and you need to also ensure that in the trade off between fidelity and latency or between sensitivity and specificity you are able to find the right sweet spot which is suitable for you you can pick something that is appropriate I just on a lighter note I was driving from the PSA office and there was such traffic jam which most of you experienced so I exercised my sovereignty and I started walking so you find alternatives when you think sovereign 3 kilometers that’s why I was late so there are alternatives and also provisions for human participation much better there could be places where AI could be substitutional but many other places where you may want it to be just supplementary or complementary.
So alternatives is another thing that interoperability provides for. And I think the very key is scale out. I mean if just by scaling up we could cater to everyone, great. I would say that at least matches one checkbox which is people being catered to. But even we are not there. Scaling up is not going to cater. The capabilities are not there. But even if it were hypothetically, I think participation would also ensure that people are part of the process. It’s informed. I mean Bharat Jain, I take pride in one of our consortium members at IIM Indore. We are a consortium of nine academic institutions. And in the Institute of Management, what are they doing? They do a fabulous job in going to many of the second tier cities, going to people who have data and engage in conversations, education.
That data is an asset and you could actually transform that asset into IP generation. generation and not just source data. So the dialogue, right, and informed decision making is where participation is encouraged when you have interoperability. I just want to add just what he said. He made a very interesting point. How do you monetize data, correct? And this is something which needs a very different approach because today what happens is you are sourcing data and I think PM yesterday made a very amazing statement, correct? He’s saying, jiska data uska adhikar, correct? Very interesting. But if you look at what he’s saying is the creator of the data, the producer of the data, the consent provider for the use, all have a role to play and that’s what I’ve been using this word called data product or a data catalog.
So you need a catalog first. You need to build a data product and then set up a data contract, which is the fundamental, fundamental for interoperability. I just want to add. Because if that gets solved, I can choose my own personal data and say my data catalog, you can have five things to access. I think India has proven that amazing way of identity payments. So I think we can actually set up an environment where you can really build this. And the data benefactor is also the same person. So great point, Professor. I think it probably means definitely removing or optimizing the various layers and taking it to the last person in the rank. And it will help scale to the 1 .4 billion what we need.
I think thank you for that. Let me ask you again a second question. I think this is a very, very direct question. I think as a country, I think we are building our foundation models. You are one of the person who is building foundation models of the country. And at large, we have built sub -500 billion parameter model. And globally, we are going to 5 trillion or plus. The comparison is so huge, right? What do you think India’s moat can be when we are really, you know, in such a situation where we are at a disadvantage, though we have to aggressively, you know, handle that? Yeah, so the other important takeaway, which probably, you know, addresses some part of what you’re saying, what you’re asking is cooperation, right?
Collaboration. A collaboration, honestly, is not just a transactional process. It begins here, right? The will to understand the other side. I just published a book, you know, Informatics and AI for Healthcare. This is with my colleague, Shetha Jadhav. And what we did in the entire book was I tried to, I mean, I empathize with all the entire life cycle of a healthcare practitioner. And we tried to map every, ML example, informatic example, parsing to healthcare, right? and vice versa there was reciprocation from the other side as well it was very interesting exercise I think that’s how co -design also happens, so collaboration is actually to do innovation and again China has shown in many ways, right in contrast to the US ecosystem that co -design can lead to very innovative ideas, and co -design often is even lacking at the level of algorithms and infrastructure, right right there, new algorithms can come up but all the way to application layers so collaboration also comes by creating ecosystem where people can participate since you alluded again to Bharat Jain, we have a consortium of 9 academic institutions and the whole collaboration is through a section 8 company a not for profit company, which engages with for profit entities but also the academic institutions 60 full time employees work with 100 plus researchers, master students, it’s been a very profound exercise in a very short span of time I mean we may say we are late since you brought up also the landscape outside which is 1 trillion plus parameters and that’s also our North Star at least from the India AI vision that is our goal to get to at least 1 trillion parameters but even the 17 million parameter model that we have released there is a lot of research due diligence that has gone into the architecture choice and actually we are very proud of whatever model we released because ensuring that you know if you have two shared experts one of them is actually catering to languages and mixed code the other is catering to domain due diligence that was actually done based on Indian context right the fact that we covered 22 languages in our speech model the text to speech model again all of that is raised we explicitly captured the common phonetic vocabulary of Indian language And that’s only possible through this process of empathy.
I mean, linguist has to empathize with the computer scientist and vice versa. If we do that, we can actually create magic. Believe me. You can create magic. We just have to break our silos and the biggest silos sitting here. I mean, in fact, an endorsement to this was when we actually built our LLM enabled speech to text model. We had a projector layer which actually projected from speech to text. And we used a mixture of experts for the projection. It was very interesting. The expert for Hindi and Marathi performed very similarly. I mean, they were the same expert. Expert got shared. Whereas for Telugu, there was collaboration between Hindi and Tamil experts. So, data, domain knowledge, all of them actually are reinforcing each other.
So, this is actually a time where we can break the language barrier in my interaction with you. on 8th Jan, I gifted him a book from our consortium called Samanway Samanway stands for bringing all languages together and he said, we need to use AI also to show the strength of India it’s not just AI for India, but AI by India great, great, I think the point of collaboration and you know the story what we all have heard single stake course is a bunch of stakes I think it’s very true and that’s what is the mode for India collaboration, building that collaborative effort between different universities, bringing 9 different universities together to work and it’s a gigantic work, especially what you have created is amazing also, we are very happy 3 days back, we also announced at MOU with our heritage foundation sitting in the US we got a lot of support from people in the Bay Area, so once you open up for collaboration, you will find there is support from around the world and it’s very very good and I think that’s the most important Great, great, great.
Thank you, thank you, Professor Ganesh.
So, let me come to Sunil, you, right? I think we all agree that, you know, compute is one of the biggest player and pillar, right? And then government is doing their bit, right? I think they are doing their bit. But again, I think in terms of compute for the country, for some unity, can it be a shared commodity? Can it be, you know, some commodity which different, you know, factors of the country or probably ecosystem come together and build, right? How to solve that problem? Because as you rightly said, few thousands versus few lakhs, right? That’s something, yeah, very high.
Number one, they said, you all come and panel with us at a right price point, right quality, and you declare how much GPUs you can give. They were not forcing us. They said, okay, you decide how much you want to give. We all got empaneled. We contributed GPUs, which were made available to startups. Then government said, every quarter we will come and we’ll encourage new and new providers to come up with the facility. And even existing players can also top up their capacities. And every next time, because the market forces, when the quantities start increasing, supplies start increasing, the pricing also will start reducing. Government say, okay, if new player comes, they can reduce the price.
Existing players will have to match. And they keep on empaneling more and more capacity. And that is something which has resulted into that 38 ,000 GPUs, which government is talking about, the shared compute facility, which is nothing but a, you can say, combination of the compute capacity created by multiple providers like us. And now yesterday, Prime Minister announced that 20 ,000 more are being added to this facility. So I would say, both as a concern, except this is proven that last 18 months, must is doable and both are the technology right while technically it’s possible that the same model can get trained like Ganeshji I’m sure can can talk very authoritatively on this subject technically also you can train on multiple different clusters of course inferencing you can do in multiple different places but even if you don’t do that you are actually what government did very democratically okay IIT we will put you into this service provider okay Sarvam will put you into this service provider okay GAN will put you into this provider so government is democratically making sure that they are encouraging industry to invest into this creating this capability which is required and we because we are getting business we are scaling up now we are investing more and more now and then they are making it available to people because India needs its own models we may use frontier models for certain purposes but as minister was saying that 95 percent of the use cases of the country can very well be done by a 20 billion to 100 billion parameter model right of course Ganeshji is carrying a mandate to create a trillion parameter model also in which country required almost we can for all those things why anybody else can do right their success Bharat Jain success and Sarvam success has proven that India can do it right so I would say that shared compute framework which has been done it is proven we just need to scale it up and my request to government which I think they are doing is don’t limit it only for training of models because models training is one step done now these models will be going to massage for adoption and you require millions of GPUs I think I’m repeating myself but that is where government need to fund the first cycle of inferencing on these models when users start adopting let’s say agriculture use case or a healthcare use case or a education use case or whichever use case which come on multiple UPI equal and use case will come up it will take time for users to start adopting it start accepting it making it a part of their lives at that time it will take time for users to start adopting it start accepting it making it a part of their lives at that time only user will be happy to pay 10 paisa per transaction or maybe 50 rupees per month subscription for that that time these models and use cases will become self -sufficient to generate revenue also then they will need government support but at least for i would say first cycle of inferencing maybe one year or two years government not only support the funding of the training of the model but also they support the first phase of inferencing on this model so that adoption happens revenue models emerge and after that government can say okay let private sector invest and government will come back to their original role of regulator
great so i think i think probably it will augment and put fewer thoughts right so the india mission has really created the single fire right yeah this fire is going to every state in the country yes all 28 states all eight union territories they are building aicoes yes and the mandate for each co is to give compute right i think that like a small wildfire it will spread all across the country it will be phenomenal but again i think at the same time you know we have to keep up the pace right i think one thing is space.
Absolutely, Ankit, just trying to, this is something which I know two years back when we said that I’m putting 8000 GPUs, everybody started laughing. Because we were starting with the base when India was not having GPUs, right? Today, we comfortably say okay, India will be going to 50 -60 ,000 GPUs but even today I can tell you India require millions of GPUs. In US, just 3 or 4 deep tech companies are collectively owning millions of GPUs. India has got 1 .4 billion people out of which 1 billion people are carrying smartphones, creating, consuming content every single minute. And as Ganeshji will talk about, they all are creating voice -based AI because India’s AI will be voice -based.
People are talking in their own native language or a mixture of Hindi, English, everything. And they’ll be comfortable doing that instead of writing in their native language or screen which is not so easy. When you’re doing that and actually innovations are being done that even from feature phone or regular telephone line, not using smartphones, you will be able to talk to an AI model at the back end. When you are basically talking about 1 .4 billion people coming in the AI fold for multiple use cases. Just imagine what type of number of GPUs will be coming for inferencing and how many GPUs will be coming for training multiple models for sectoring all these things. So you are right, Ankit.
What we have done in last two years is kudos to the whole ecosystem, to government and everybody, all of us. But we need to keep on building for next 7, 8, 10 years. Sorry, just to give one or two more data points. India is creating and consuming 20 % of world’s data. One -fifth of the world’s data is created and consumed by India. Only 3 % of that data is hosted in India. That shows the upscope of the infrastructure both at the physical data center level and also in terms of the compute or GPU level India need to build. Because we don’t want any single country or any single company start dictating our digital destiny.
We need to be as much sovereign as possible.
Thank you, Sunil. Thank you. Kalyan, let me come to you. So, Kalyan, I think one big base for the sovereignty is the skill set. to research, develop, deploy, right? And do all of that responsibly, right? I think SCL being, you know, one of the companies who have done that, right, in the last two, three years, what will be your nuggets, right? I think how other companies, other players in the country, other countries can do that, right?
So, if you look at, see, what is India known for? India is known for capability, historically. NASSCOM, right? But that capability was historically, and for a majority, and most of the business capability for hire. You basically are building capability to build things for others, and that’s been the core business. We’ve now become pretty much, if you really look at, if some other country thinks sovereignty, 50 % of their, global tech engineering services, development operations talent is sitting out of India. You see those GCC crates. But where is the pivot? The pivot is, I think what Professor was talking about, is you have to pivot towards build. We are always more towards service. So building, research, development, build your own IP, and how do you make India for the world?
I think it’s very important. I think that’s what our journey has been. So what we did is in 2015 -16, because we have one advantage, we are a single majority shareholder run company. Mr. Nader had a very ambitious vision. He said, we are building products for others, we should start building for yourself. It’s 2015. It’s a very conscious strategy, and he realized if you want to play in the global market, you need to have access to market permission and market access. Because people would only buy if you are a software product company. So that whole idea of acquiring India intellectual property, because if you really start to see the underlying of these pieces, you could build on open source and other stuff, but suddenly what’s happening is some of these open source companies are getting acquired and suddenly becoming closed source.
This is becoming a very interesting plan and suddenly some of them are getting classified as dual use. Suddenly they’ll say, oh, this is dual use tech, so I can only release this. So what we’re seeing from a skill standpoint, you need lesser smarter people. So I’m making a very controversial statement. You need lesser people, smarter people. You need engineers more than coders. See what’s happening is that we’re building quarters. You need engineers, people who think systems thinking you need people who are research bent. I meet students and I asked MBA students, what did you do? I did engineering. I said, why the hell did you waste four years of your life? If you wanted to go and do an MBA, the things like, why are you not doing deeper?
Why don’t you specialize in a domain? But those are things like even fundamental things. I would say. The big leap is going to be. I think India can solve something very interestingly, and as he’s referring to the PSA, quantum. Because I think the kind of compute needs you have, and looking at energy GPUs, you could completely change the computational paradigm. So hence, but that needs fundamental science, research, physics. Like no one wants to study physics. If you go back 20 years back in this country, everyone wanted to go and do coding. So those are the fundamental skills. So what we’re doing, in a very small way, we are acquiring, we are building talent and research pools.
So 50 % of HCL software product business is in India, engineering. But my second largest engineering center is in Rome. Third is in Israel. Then I’m in Perth, Austin, Chemsford outside of Boston. Why? Because if global companies can come to India and acquire talent to build and research, and then build an IP and take it to US, I’m doing the reverse. So AppScan, which is a code security product, the security heuristics is built in Israel. The, SAS UX is built in Boston. but the core engineering is in Bangalore but the IP is registered in India which is where we are moving a very different way we are now tapping global talent to build for us so we are still a billion and a half we are not big but we have got 130 countries so we are a step in the change it’s a long journey it needs to get away from short term thinking hire people to get them built I think you have to go to a very different model I think that’s what we are starting within the larger scheme of HCM but I think we are walking the right path I think we are acquiring assets continuously and building that
so let me add probably what I am seeing in the skill level the persona at least what NASCOM is focused on is the developer and the way we code is changing so NASCOM has done concentrated effort to help developers learn the new way of coding redefine the whole SCLC as a target what I have taken my team has taken we have taken a target of you know enabling 150k developers across the country next six months. Make them AI enabled, AI ready. Help them change the whole, you know, or unlearn and learn the new way. I think that’s what, is one thing, right? But finally, I think, which I should make everyone aware, I think there will be announcements sometime soon.
But with the MIT and, you know, the education industry, we are rewriting the whole, you know, technical, BTEC, MTEC, MCA, BCA curriculum, right? I think we are adding more specialization, as rightly said. Because we need specialists. We don’t need journalists. As an engineer, he studies 48 subjects in four years. At the end, what is he specialized on? It is his luck, right? The group he gets, the project he takes, somehow, some job he gets, right? So, I think that’s what we are changing. Soon, there will be announcements happening. But again, I think that’s what is happening at the background. Coming back to Benno, Benno, you have a product which is so simple, anyone can use it and build agents through that, right?
And get, you know, benefit, benefit from it. that. Let me ask you this. I think the one big piece of AI to really be mature and impact is adoption, right? And you started with the 95 % project fail or probably don’t go to production, right? So if we have to really do adoption at scale, what are the top issues you see, right? And how do you suggest, you know, the companies or folks here can take some pointers to mitigate it in their life functionally?
Yeah. So I’ll give you three. One is very specific to India, actually. those are relatable to our solution, but I think those are real use cases because the proof is, like I said, the proof is in the pudding, right? One is like you got to solve a real use case, something that is actually changing in people’s life. So AI is complex and AI is people still like trying to figure out AI. So it needs to be something that is into people’s everyday life. So in our case, for example, let’s go back. So if you look at Cursor or Lovable, right, they changed the life of, you know, vibe coding, software engineers. In our situation here at GenSpark, we looked at people that were producing office work, right?
So people looking at producing Excel, PowerPoint, and essentially just like any mechanical work on the everyday office work, right? Because if you think about it, every time you office task, all of that office work is very mechanical, right? And that’s why we realized all this massive growth in our solution, right? So to your point, I think that adoption… comes from like something that is something that can change people’s life and something in a very simplistic way right I think the second the second thing is should be consolidation of tools right I think from the time that we wake up in the morning I think most of us pick up our phones and we have we inundate about messages and naps and then we go to our office work and then we have probably a hundred tools that we have to touch you know actually we looked at a you know draw our research at work you know people waste in average two and a half hours a day right just you know flipping between different solutions right so in that causes contacts loss of context right so if there’s a waking consolidate tools that also drives adoption right you know we have probably a hundred tools that we have to touch you know so I think the third one is especially in India is In fact, there’s a lot of different languages in this country, which you brought up, right?
So I think in this country, especially LLMs, I think really struggling with being able to drive the right language, especially with all the different dialects that this country has. So being able to really naturalize and be able to bring the sovereignty here, I think is very important. And I think last but not least, people are very scared about data, right? And how that data, once they bring data into AI, how is that data going to be treated, right? So I think the solution needs to bring that sense of security of how that data is going to be managed.
Great. Thank you, Breno. I think with the last segment, last question, 30 seconds each, right? Again, probably starting with Breno, since you have the mic, right? So AI is not a short game. It’s a game for the next five years, 10 years, decades. Probably centuries. you know what is the challenge as a humanity we have to mitigate you feel that you know we don’t align with something which is hazardous to us
yeah so I think it’s you know actually I was having breakfast the other day and actually a person I was serving asked me the exact same question and I think that it’s how human beings interact with AI I think we’re still trying to figure out how to properly interact with AI and I think the speed of AI is evolving I think we’re still uncertain how to manage that I think the line on the sand moves so fast that we can’t really catch up to that right and the interaction of AI and us no one really knows how to do it yet
so I’ll map the earlier part in this part. You know, a very specific use of AI for self to, you know, make, you know, your life simpler. We’ll adopt AI skill. And we have to build a certain, you know, the processes to interact with AI in the long run. Because AI is changing, things are changing. Thank you, Breno. Coming back to you, Professor Ganesh, right? Same question, 30 seconds. What’s the challenge you see if we make something, you know, not aligned?
I think the biggest challenge in not making AI aligned is that we will become products, not even consumers, right? We want to be in the steering wheel. I remember my very fondly, my first machine translation paper, I called it, you know, machine assisted human translation. Obviously, I can’t, I mean, that will sound too regressive. But the key is provenance. Right? I mean, how can you leave provenance? at every step in the stack, whether it’s data aggregation, which is again aligned with ecosystem. You need an ecosystem to leave provenance on the data part, whether it’s metadata refinement, data curation, provenance at the level of trading, tokenization, provenance at the observability, the other keyword, right? At the level of the way the model performs.
Models are glass boxes, because that gives you enough breathing space. Where do you, where should you actually yield your practices versus existing practices? So I think if you don’t have that view, the recipes, if they’re not made available, if the education isn’t there, I mean as a prof I always focus on the education part, I think we’ll become products.
Thank you, thank you. Sunil, you and then Kalyan.
No, I think I concur with the views that at the end of the day we should not do AI for the sake of doing AI. It is a means to achieve an end purpose and the end purpose is beneficial. for the masses. I remember I think I was seeing on a YouTube video when Prime Minister Sir met all the startups and Professor Ganesh was there and I think Prime Minister Sir said to everybody don’t create toys, don’t use make AI to make toys, right, and use AI which benefits the masses in the real problem which they face in their real lives. So that is something that that is where the name of this event also has come in the Impact Summit, right, that and I think yesterday also used one word that unlike the previous summit where we are too much concerned about security governance which are things to be done but at the same time, keval bhai nahi rekhna hai AI ka, AI se aap apna bhagya bana sakte, apna bhahisha bana sakte ho.
So kaise AI se how we sort of create an impact, we benefit the masses and also machine should not end up dictating our lives as again I would say ke we should not end up becoming product itself. As much AI makes improvements, it possibly will never reach a stage where it starts acquiring human’s emotions, it starts acquiring our sense of gut, it starts acquiring our sense of culture, it starts acquiring what we speak, our body language, not just with our words. So I think human in the loop and human remaining the master of AI is something we’ll have to guard against all the time.
Interaction, don’t become product, have human -centric development. Kalyan?
I would say, break this into four key areas. Professor mentioned, I think the consumer AI, so I’m going to break it into consumer, enterprise, government and critical national infrastructure defense. So let’s, the reasons, all fours are going to play, just like ten seconds. Consumer AI, you are the product, unfortunately. You now have to use data control to decide how much of what you give to get. It’s a give to get mode, correct? In the consumer AI. Because the day you click I agree on an Android 4 on an Apple intelligence, suddenly you are the product and you’re getting something back but that give to get balance and that’s where the role of the regulator in my opinion has a far more play than in the enterprise of regulation enterprise god made world in seven days because he had no installed base enterprise cios you go and talk to cios on the ground their reality is that they’ve got a big problem architectural problem their data landscape is broken so they have to pivot from process workflow to data first big shift so they need to start about lineage metadata most of these companies don’t have metadata correct metadata discovery use techniques acknowledge graph to understand the metadata and then you organize your data for so that AI can be benefited I think the big place in govtech government government citizen engagement g2c massive but that’s where I think that sovereign AI play comes in where the work which serve them is doing or or the whole bar agent important because that’s where you can host citizen service platform and the last is for critical national infrastructure air gap networks, private AI and defense.
So I think we need to also have a very broken up view of this whole thing rather than trying to have one brush to paint all of them. But I think the last is sovereignty is all about choice. Making choice. Like he walked here. It’s a great choice. I can run on hyperscaler A, B. I can run on IOTA. I can run on CIFI. I can run on any or I can run on my own infrastructure. Then I need to have choice of it’s all about choice. And second is please AI exists for human good. So put the people back into the center. Human because we suddenly have made human someone in the side and everything is about AI.
It’s about people using AI surrounding them. So that’s what my thought was.
Great. Thank you. I think we have had a lot of good nuggets from everyone. I think we’ll continue this conversation after this. As a part of NASCOM, I think 7 AI is a big initiative for us. I think we have been driving it since last three, three and a half years. Ganesh knows that. Sunil knows that. services companies, we have worked enough with them. To keep it on, I think it’s not an end point. We have to think about the sovereignty and we have to think about how India builds the AGI capability, quantum AGI capability. I think that’s the journey we are on as NASCOM. I think we are writing a current policy document for government on sovereign AI and AGI roadmap.
And I think the QR code is there. The QR code will be here and I want all of you to have a look. It’s a dark one. Please work on it. I think that’s that. Yeah, Ganesh?
I mean, the potential is so immense. We have not even scratched the surface, not even the tip of the iceberg we have touched. So, sovereignty is critical because the amount of inefficiency in that entire stack needs to be done away with. GPUs were never designed for building these models, right? Legacy and how can we use even the large work we are doing, workload to actually do better? A SIG design? can we use it to have better model serving engines? So, there’s so much to do. I think everyone should get inquisitive about the entire stack. That’s where sovereignty comes.
Absolutely. I think we are trying to do that in a collaborative way with all of our contributors. Please be a collaborator. We will have a QR code and please respond to that. Give your inputs. And with that, thank you to my panelists. I loved it and I think hope you also loved it. Thank you again.
Just one thing I want to just say. Watch on 21st, the PM is inaugurating a new JV which HCL is announcing with Foxconn. It’s called India Chips Limited. I would call it a patient capital. It’s about 16 and 32 nanometer fab which are creating. Basically it’s like a OSAT unit. It’s going to come out after 5 years. You have to build the whole thing. But also building that skill, correct? It’s a big important thing. And we have to start now. We cannot wait for 5 years on the line. So,
Thank you so much to our panelists I request the panelists to please stay back for a group photo right now You can also access the report that Ankit has been talking about in the QR code displayed on the digital background before and leave feedback I’m also happy to announce Thank you Thank you to our panelists I’m also happy to announce an MOU being signed with Amrita Vishwa Vidyapetam and NASCOM right now Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 1
Speech speed
55 words per minute
Speech length
330 words
Speech time
359 seconds
Participant identification
Explanation
The moderator introduces himself at the start of the session, establishing his presence for the audience.
Evidence
“My name is Sunil Gupta.” [1]
Major discussion point
Opening remarks
Topics
The enabling environment for digital development
Sunil Gupta
Speech speed
200 words per minute
Speech length
2225 words
Speech time
665 seconds
GPU scarcity and scaling need
Explanation
Sunil stresses that India requires millions of GPUs for both training and inferencing, far beyond the current 50‑60 k installed, and that this scale is essential for national AI capability.
Evidence
“At that time, the number of GPUs required will be millions.” [4] “Today, we comfortably say okay, India will be going to 50 -60 ,000 GPUs but even today I can tell you India require millions of GPUs.” [5] “But if you as a single company like SpaceX or like Meta can have 1 million GPUs, India as a country require multiple million GPUs.” [7] “Just imagine what type of number of GPUs will be coming for inferencing and how many GPUs will be coming for training multiple models for sectoring all these things.” [10]
Major discussion point
Compute Infrastructure & GPU Availability
Topics
Artificial intelligence | The enabling environment for digital development
Government‑driven multi‑provider compute ecosystem
Explanation
He describes a shared compute facility built from the capacity of multiple providers, with the government coordinating and funding the first inferencing cycle to jump‑start adoption.
Evidence
“And that is something which has resulted into that 38 ,000 GPUs, which government is talking about, the shared compute facility, which is nothing but a, you can say, combination of the compute capacity created by multiple providers like us.” [15] “…government is democratically making sure that they are encouraging industry to invest into this creating this capability which is required…” [11]
Major discussion point
Compute Infrastructure & GPU Availability
Topics
Artificial intelligence | The enabling environment for digital development
AI for mass benefit, not toys
Explanation
Citing the Prime Minister’s directive, Sunil argues AI should solve real problems for the population rather than being used for frivolous applications.
Evidence
“I remember I think I was seeing on a YouTube video when Prime Minister Sir met all the startups and Professor Ganesh was there and I think Prime Minister Sir said to everybody don’t create toys, don’t use make AI to make toys, right, and use AI which benefits the masses in the real problem which they face in their real lives.” [102]
Major discussion point
AI Alignment, Human‑Centric Design & Ethical Use
Topics
Human rights and the ethical dimensions of the information society | Artificial intelligence
Ankit Bose
Speech speed
173 words per minute
Speech length
1450 words
Speech time
501 seconds
Shared‑compute model inquiry
Explanation
Ankit questions whether compute resources can be treated as a common commodity that the ecosystem collectively builds and accesses.
Evidence
“But again, I think in terms of compute for the country, for some unity, can it be a shared commodity?” [16] “Can it be, you know, some commodity which different, you know, factors of the country or probably ecosystem come together and build, right?” [22]
Major discussion point
Compute Infrastructure & GPU Availability
Topics
Artificial intelligence | The enabling environment for digital development
Need for unified executive backing
Explanation
He summarises that AI projects need tightly‑collaborated teams with a single executive sponsor to move beyond pilot stages.
Evidence
“I think let me summarize probably the three points that, you know, you need a close collaborated teams, right, with a single point of view with executive sponsorship.” [83]
Major discussion point
Adoption Barriers, ROI & Executive Sponsorship
Topics
The digital economy | Capacity development
Mass developer up‑skilling and curriculum overhaul
Explanation
Ankit outlines NASCOM’s plan to train 150 k developers in AI‑enabled coding and to revamp engineering curricula with new specializations.
Evidence
“so let me add probably what I am seeing in the skill level the persona at least what NASCOM is focused on is the developer and the way we code is changing so NASCOM has done concentrated effort to help developers learn the new way of coding redefine the whole SCLC as a target what I have taken my team has taken we have taken a target of you know enabling 150k developers across the country next six months.” [97] “But with the MIT and, you know, the education industry, we are rewriting the whole, you know, technical, BTEC, MTEC, MCA, BCA curriculum, right?” [96]
Major discussion point
Skill Development, Talent & Building Indigenous IP
Topics
Capacity development | Artificial intelligence
Kalyan Kumar
Speech speed
175 words per minute
Speech length
1697 words
Speech time
579 seconds
Infrastructure layer and shared commodity
Explanation
Kalyan frames compute as part of a broader five‑layer stack (energy, power, cooling, etc.) that should be offered as a shared infrastructure service.
Evidence
“Mr. talking the five layers layer stack right and that’s where if you what sunil mentioned is for a easier way i say i use the word infrastructure which can combine energy or the ping power uh cooling the whole stack so that’s that’s providing that layer and then explain the whole model piece…” [17] “Because I think the kind of compute needs you have, and looking at energy GPUs, you could completely change the computational paradigm.” [6]
Major discussion point
Compute Infrastructure & GPU Availability
Topics
Artificial intelligence | The enabling environment for digital development
Data platform as critical layer
Explanation
He emphasizes building centralized‑to‑edge data platforms, vector databases and data contracts to ensure high‑quality data for AI applications.
Evidence
“you need to start to also build a data stack data platforms vector dbs edge vector i personally think you can do as much centralization the way the data consumption model is going is going to highly get distributed going to go down into the edge…” [17] “The data platform is going to become very important, because as we’re building the data platform, the enterprise will only scale if you get your data.” [40]
Major discussion point
Data Stack, Interoperability & Standards
Topics
Data governance | Artificial intelligence
Shift from services to product/IP
Explanation
Kalyan calls for moving away from a services‑centric model toward building proprietary IP, hiring smarter engineers, and investing in fundamental research such as quantum computing.
Evidence
“but the core engineering is in Bangalore but the IP is registered in India which is where we are moving a very different way we are now tapping global talent to build for us…” [26] “You need engineers more than coders.” [86]
Major discussion point
Skill Development, Talent & Building Indigenous IP
Topics
Artificial intelligence | Capacity development
Consumer AI as product and regulatory choice
Explanation
He warns that consumers become the product in AI services and stresses the need for regulatory choices that re‑center humans.
Evidence
“Consumer AI, you are the product, unfortunately.” [120] “Making choice.” [122]
Major discussion point
AI Alignment, Human‑Centric Design & Ethical Use
Topics
Human rights and the ethical dimensions of the information society | Artificial intelligence
Ganesh Ramakrishnan
Speech speed
157 words per minute
Speech length
1464 words
Speech time
558 seconds
Interoperability across layers
Explanation
Ganesh advocates for interoperability at every stack level to enable alternative models, data products and broader participation.
Evidence
“I would suggest interoperability at every layer.” [19] “Interoperability encourages participation and in the words of PSA, if you are there in our Bharat, genesision is a meaningful participation right interoperability also helps you present alternatives…” [56]
Major discussion point
Data Stack, Interoperability & Standards
Topics
Data governance | Artificial intelligence
Data ownership and cataloguing
Explanation
He stresses the need for data‑product catalogs, contracts and consent mechanisms so that data creators retain rights and data can be treated as an asset.
Evidence
“You need to build a data product and then set up a data contract, which is the fundamental, fundamental for interoperability.” [44] “But if you look at what he’s saying is the creator of the data, the producer of the data, the consent provider for the use, all have a role to play…” [63] “So you need a catalog first.” [65]
Major discussion point
Data Stack, Interoperability & Standards
Topics
Data governance | Artificial intelligence
Academic‑industry consortiums
Explanation
Ganesh describes a consortium of nine academic institutions collaborating with industry and global partners to co‑design models and data assets.
Evidence
“We are a consortium of nine academic institutions.” [101] “…bringing 9 different universities together to work and it’s a gigantic work…” [119]
Major discussion point
Collaboration, Consortiums & Ecosystem Building
Topics
The enabling environment for digital development | Artificial intelligence
Provenance and alignment to avoid productization
Explanation
He highlights provenance as essential to keep AI aligned with human values and prevent users from becoming the product.
Evidence
“But the key is provenance.” [82] “I think the biggest challenge in not making AI aligned is that we will become products, not even consumers, right?” [106]
Major discussion point
AI Alignment, Human‑Centric Design & Ethical Use
Topics
Human rights and the ethical dimensions of the information society | Artificial intelligence
Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan
Speech speed
166 words per minute
Speech length
292 words
Speech time
105 seconds
Provenance importance (professor view)
Explanation
From the professor’s perspective, provenance is the cornerstone for trustworthy AI deployment.
Evidence
“But the key is provenance.” [82]
Major discussion point
AI Alignment, Human‑Centric Design & Ethical Use
Topics
Human rights and the ethical dimensions of the information society | Artificial intelligence
Brandon Mello
Speech speed
147 words per minute
Speech length
1171 words
Speech time
475 seconds
ROI invisibility and champion problem
Explanation
Brandon points out that most CFOs cannot quantify AI ROI and that a lack of executive champions stalls AI initiatives.
Evidence
“And the first one is what I call ROI invisibility, right?” [69] “…a third of CFOs really nowadays, they cannot quantify ROI inside of their organizations, right?” [72] “And only one out of ten can actually have tools that can actually measure ROI, right?” [73] “My third point is the champion problem.” [71] “…there’s really no executive sponsorship… deals never get approved.” [77]
Major discussion point
Adoption Barriers, ROI & Executive Sponsorship
Topics
The digital economy | Capacity development
Agreements
Agreement points
Human-centric AI development with humans remaining in control
Speakers
– Sunil Gupta
– Ganesh Ramakrishnan
– Kalyan Kumar
Arguments
AI should augment human capabilities while preserving human emotions, culture, and decision-making
Humans must remain in control and not become products of AI systems
Different approaches needed for consumer AI, enterprise AI, government AI, and critical infrastructure
Summary
All speakers emphasized that AI should serve humanity rather than replace human agency, with humans maintaining control over AI systems and not becoming products themselves
Topics
Artificial intelligence | Human rights and the ethical dimensions of the information society
Collaboration and partnerships are essential for India’s AI success
Speakers
– Ganesh Ramakrishnan
– Kalyan Kumar
– Sunil Gupta
Arguments
Interoperability at every layer encourages participation, provides alternatives, and enables scale-out rather than just scale-up
India must pivot from service-oriented capability to building intellectual property and products
Government’s shared compute framework with 38,000+ GPUs has proven successful and should be scaled up for both training and inferencing
Summary
Speakers agreed that collaborative approaches, whether through academic consortiums, public-private partnerships, or global talent acquisition, are crucial for building India’s sovereign AI capabilities
Topics
Artificial intelligence | The enabling environment for digital development | Capacity development
Infrastructure and compute are foundational requirements for sovereign AI
Speakers
– Sunil Gupta
– Kalyan Kumar
Arguments
Infrastructure and Compute Requirements for Sovereign AI – GPU infrastructure is the core bottleneck that India must solve to enable AI at scale for 1.4 billion people
Data platforms, vector databases, and edge computing capabilities are critical infrastructure layers often overlooked between compute and applications
Summary
Both speakers recognized that robust infrastructure – whether GPU compute or data platforms – forms the essential foundation for India’s AI ambitions and must be addressed comprehensively
Topics
Artificial intelligence | Information and communication technologies for development | The enabling environment for digital development
AI solutions must address real-world problems and benefit masses
Speakers
– Sunil Gupta
– Brandon Mello
Arguments
AI should benefit masses with real-world impact, not create toys or become ends in themselves
Solutions must solve real everyday problems and consolidate tools rather than add complexity
Summary
Both speakers emphasized that AI development should focus on practical applications that solve genuine problems and improve people’s daily lives rather than creating novelty applications
Topics
Artificial intelligence | Social and economic development
Skills transformation requires fundamental changes in education and talent development
Speakers
– Kalyan Kumar
– Ankit Bose
Arguments
Need fewer but smarter engineers with systems thinking and research orientation rather than just coders
Rewriting technical education curriculum to create specialists rather than generalists
Summary
Both speakers agreed that India’s education system needs fundamental restructuring to produce specialized, research-oriented engineers rather than generalist coders
Topics
Capacity development | Artificial intelligence
Similar viewpoints
Both emphasized the importance of cross-domain collaboration and global talent acquisition while maintaining intellectual property ownership in India
Speakers
– Ganesh Ramakrishnan
– Kalyan Kumar
Arguments
Breaking silos between linguists, computer scientists, and domain experts creates breakthrough innovations in Indian context models
Acquiring global talent and building research centers worldwide while keeping IP in India
Topics
Artificial intelligence | Capacity development | The enabling environment for digital development
Both speakers recognized India’s linguistic diversity as a strength and opportunity for AI development, emphasizing voice-based and multilingual AI solutions
Speakers
– Sunil Gupta
– Ganesh Ramakrishnan
Arguments
Focus on voice-based AI for India’s multilingual population accessing AI through smartphones and feature phones
Language Integration and Mixed-Code AI Models – AI models can break language barriers by learning shared linguistic patterns across Indian languages
Topics
Artificial intelligence | Closing all digital divides | Information and communication technologies for development
Both speakers acknowledged the complexity of AI adoption challenges and the need for tailored approaches based on specific use cases and contexts
Speakers
– Brandon Mello
– Kalyan Kumar
Arguments
Language localization and data security concerns are major barriers to adoption in India
Different approaches needed for consumer AI, enterprise AI, government AI, and critical infrastructure
Topics
Artificial intelligence | Building confidence and security in the use of ICTs | Closing all digital divides
Unexpected consensus
Data monetization and creator rights
Speakers
– Ganesh Ramakrishnan
– Kalyan Kumar
Arguments
Data creators, producers, and consent providers should all have roles in data monetization and benefit sharing
Different approaches needed for consumer AI, enterprise AI, government AI, and critical infrastructure
Explanation
Unexpected consensus emerged on the need for equitable data value distribution and creator rights, with both academic and industry perspectives aligning on this ethical dimension of AI development
Topics
Data governance | Human rights and the ethical dimensions of the information society | The digital economy
India’s potential to lead through efficiency rather than scale
Speakers
– Ganesh Ramakrishnan
– Sunil Gupta
Arguments
India has immense untapped potential in AI by addressing inefficiencies across the entire technology stack
Indian models like those from Sarvam are beating global benchmarks on India-specific use cases
Explanation
Surprising agreement that India can compete globally not just through scale but through innovation, efficiency, and specialized solutions for local contexts, challenging the assumption that parameter count is the only measure of AI capability
Topics
Artificial intelligence | Information and communication technologies for development
Overall assessment
Summary
Strong consensus emerged around human-centric AI development, collaborative approaches, infrastructure requirements, practical problem-solving focus, and skills transformation needs
Consensus level
High level of consensus with complementary perspectives rather than conflicting views. The speakers represented different sectors (academia, industry, government support) but shared aligned visions for India’s sovereign AI development. This consensus suggests a mature understanding of AI challenges and a coordinated approach to addressing them, which bodes well for India’s AI strategy implementation.
Differences
Different viewpoints
Primary bottleneck for AI development in India
Speakers
– Sunil Gupta
– Kalyan Kumar
Arguments
Infrastructure and Compute Requirements for Sovereign AI – GPU infrastructure is the core bottleneck that India must solve to enable AI at scale for 1.4 billion people
Infrastructure and Compute Requirements for Sovereign AI – Data platforms, vector databases, and edge computing capabilities are critical infrastructure layers often overlooked between compute and applications
Summary
Sunil emphasizes GPU compute infrastructure as the primary bottleneck, while Kalyan argues that data platforms and vector databases are equally critical but often overlooked infrastructure layers
Topics
Artificial intelligence | Information and communication technologies for development
Talent strategy approach
Speakers
– Kalyan Kumar
– Ankit Bose
Arguments
Skills and Talent Transformation – Need fewer but smarter engineers with systems thinking and research orientation rather than just coders
Skills and Talent Transformation – Rewriting technical education curriculum to create specialists rather than generalists
Summary
Kalyan advocates for fewer but smarter engineers with research orientation, while Ankit focuses on curriculum reform to create more specialists through education system changes
Topics
Capacity development | Artificial intelligence
AI governance approach
Speakers
– Kalyan Kumar
– Brandon Mello
Arguments
Human-Centric AI Development and Alignment – Different approaches needed for consumer AI, enterprise AI, government AI, and critical infrastructure
AI Adoption Challenges and Solutions – 95% of AI pilots fail to reach production due to ROI invisibility, data/compliance friction, and lack of executive sponsorship
Summary
Kalyan proposes segmented governance approaches for different AI use cases, while Brandon focuses on organizational and process barriers that prevent AI deployment regardless of use case
Topics
Artificial intelligence | Building confidence and security in the use of ICTs
Unexpected differences
Scale vs. Quality approach to AI development
Speakers
– Sunil Gupta
– Ganesh Ramakrishnan
Arguments
Infrastructure and Compute Requirements for Sovereign AI – India needs millions of GPUs for inferencing when AI models scale to mass adoption, similar to how UPI transformed the country
Collaboration and Interoperability as India’s Strategic Advantage – India’s strength lies in collaborative approaches rather than competing on parameter count alone
Explanation
Unexpected because both are working toward Indian AI sovereignty, but Sunil emphasizes massive scale requirements (millions of GPUs) while Ganesh argues that collaboration and quality matter more than parameter count competition
Topics
Artificial intelligence | Information and communication technologies for development
Centralized vs. Distributed AI infrastructure approach
Speakers
– Sunil Gupta
– Kalyan Kumar
Arguments
Infrastructure and Compute Requirements for Sovereign AI – Government’s shared compute framework with 38,000+ GPUs has proven successful and should be scaled up for both training and inferencing
Infrastructure and Compute Requirements for Sovereign AI – Data platforms, vector databases, and edge computing capabilities are critical infrastructure layers often overlooked between compute and applications
Explanation
Unexpected disagreement on infrastructure philosophy – Sunil advocates for scaling up centralized shared compute facilities while Kalyan emphasizes distributed edge computing and data platforms
Topics
Artificial intelligence | Information and communication technologies for development
Overall assessment
Summary
The discussion revealed surprisingly few fundamental disagreements among speakers, with most differences being complementary rather than contradictory. Main disagreements centered on prioritization (compute vs. data infrastructure), approach (scale vs. quality), and methodology (centralized vs. distributed systems)
Disagreement level
Low to moderate disagreement level with high complementarity. The speakers largely agreed on goals (Indian AI sovereignty, human-centric development, real-world impact) but offered different strategic emphases and implementation approaches. This suggests a healthy ecosystem of diverse but aligned perspectives rather than fundamental conflicts, which is positive for collaborative AI development in India
Partial agreements
Partial agreements
Both agree on the need for shared, accessible AI infrastructure, but Sunil emphasizes scaling up the current government model while Ganesh focuses on interoperability and scale-out approaches
Speakers
– Sunil Gupta
– Ganesh Ramakrishnan
Arguments
Infrastructure and Compute Requirements for Sovereign AI – Government’s shared compute framework with 38,000+ GPUs has proven successful and should be scaled up for both training and inferencing
Collaboration and Interoperability as India’s Strategic Advantage – Interoperability at every layer encourages participation, provides alternatives, and enables scale-out rather than just scale-up
Topics
Artificial intelligence | The enabling environment for digital development
Both agree India needs to build its own capabilities rather than just serve others, but Kalyan emphasizes IP ownership and global talent acquisition while Ganesh focuses on collaborative innovation and research quality
Speakers
– Kalyan Kumar
– Ganesh Ramakrishnan
Arguments
Skills and Talent Transformation – India must pivot from service-oriented capability to building intellectual property and products
Collaboration and Interoperability as India’s Strategic Advantage – India’s strength lies in collaborative approaches rather than competing on parameter count alone
Topics
Artificial intelligence | Capacity development | The enabling environment for digital development
Both agree AI should solve real problems for people, but Brandon focuses on workplace productivity and tool consolidation while Sunil emphasizes mass societal benefit and avoiding novelty applications
Speakers
– Brandon Mello
– Sunil Gupta
Arguments
AI Adoption Challenges and Solutions – Solutions must solve real everyday problems and consolidate tools rather than add complexity
AI Adoption Challenges and Solutions – AI should benefit masses with real-world impact, not create toys or become ends in themselves
Topics
Artificial intelligence | Social and economic development
Similar viewpoints
Both emphasized the importance of cross-domain collaboration and global talent acquisition while maintaining intellectual property ownership in India
Speakers
– Ganesh Ramakrishnan
– Kalyan Kumar
Arguments
Breaking silos between linguists, computer scientists, and domain experts creates breakthrough innovations in Indian context models
Acquiring global talent and building research centers worldwide while keeping IP in India
Topics
Artificial intelligence | Capacity development | The enabling environment for digital development
Both speakers recognized India’s linguistic diversity as a strength and opportunity for AI development, emphasizing voice-based and multilingual AI solutions
Speakers
– Sunil Gupta
– Ganesh Ramakrishnan
Arguments
Focus on voice-based AI for India’s multilingual population accessing AI through smartphones and feature phones
Language Integration and Mixed-Code AI Models – AI models can break language barriers by learning shared linguistic patterns across Indian languages
Topics
Artificial intelligence | Closing all digital divides | Information and communication technologies for development
Both speakers acknowledged the complexity of AI adoption challenges and the need for tailored approaches based on specific use cases and contexts
Speakers
– Brandon Mello
– Kalyan Kumar
Arguments
Language localization and data security concerns are major barriers to adoption in India
Different approaches needed for consumer AI, enterprise AI, government AI, and critical infrastructure
Topics
Artificial intelligence | Building confidence and security in the use of ICTs | Closing all digital divides
Takeaways
Key takeaways
India must solve the compute infrastructure challenge by scaling from thousands to millions of GPUs to serve 1.4 billion people effectively
Collaboration and interoperability at every layer of the AI stack is India’s strategic advantage over pure parameter competition
95% of AI pilots fail to reach production due to ROI invisibility, compliance friction, and lack of executive sponsorship
India needs to pivot from service-oriented capabilities to building intellectual property and sovereign AI products
Human-centric AI development is essential – humans must remain in control and not become products of AI systems
Government’s shared compute framework with 38,000+ GPUs has proven successful and demonstrates a viable model for scaling
Voice-based AI will be critical for India’s multilingual population accessing AI through smartphones and feature phones
Skills transformation is needed – fewer but smarter engineers with research orientation rather than just coders
AI adoption requires solving real everyday problems and consolidating tools rather than adding complexity
Resolutions and action items
NASCOM to enable 150,000 developers across India in the next six months to become AI-ready
NASCOM and MIT collaboration to rewrite technical education curriculum (BTEC, MTEC, MCA, BCA) with more specialization
Government to add 20,000 more GPUs to the shared compute facility as announced by Prime Minister
NASCOM to complete sovereign AI and AGI roadmap policy document for government
MOU signed between Amrita Vishwa Vidyapetam and NASCOM
HCL and Foxconn JV ‘India Chips Limited’ to be inaugurated on 21st for semiconductor manufacturing
Government to support first cycle of inferencing for AI models to enable mass adoption before revenue models emerge
Feedback collection through QR code for sovereign AI policy inputs from participants
Unresolved issues
How to scale from current thousands of GPUs to the millions needed for mass AI adoption
Funding mechanisms for long-term inferencing support beyond initial training phases
Specific timelines and resource allocation for reaching trillion-parameter model capabilities
Detailed implementation strategy for voice-based AI across India’s diverse linguistic landscape
Regulatory framework for different AI categories (consumer, enterprise, government, critical infrastructure)
Data monetization models that ensure creators and consent providers benefit appropriately
Integration challenges between multiple AI service providers in the shared compute framework
Quantum computing integration timeline and resource requirements for future AI capabilities
Suggested compromises
Shared compute framework where government incentivizes private investment while subsidizing access for startups and researchers
Democratic distribution of AI training across multiple service providers rather than centralized approach
Balancing centralized model training with distributed edge inferencing to optimize resource utilization
Give-to-get model for consumer AI where users control data sharing in exchange for AI services
Hybrid approach combining Indian sovereign models for 95% of use cases while leveraging frontier models for specialized needs
Gradual transition from government-supported inferencing to self-sustaining revenue models for AI applications
Multi-tiered AI strategy with different governance approaches for consumer, enterprise, government, and defense applications
Thought provoking comments
When Chad GPT got on world scene, basically AI capability came in consumer hands… Everything India has, but what India was not having at that time was compute. Because AI does not run on regular data centers or regular CPU computes, it required specialized GPU computes… At that time, the number of GPUs required will be millions.
Speaker
Sunil Gupta
Reason
This comment reframed the entire sovereignty discussion by identifying compute infrastructure as the critical bottleneck rather than talent or market demand. It provided a concrete, actionable focus area and used compelling data points (comparing India’s thousands of GPUs to the millions needed) to illustrate the scale of the challenge.
Impact
This fundamentally shifted the conversation from abstract concepts of AI sovereignty to concrete infrastructure needs. It established compute as the primary theme that other panelists would reference throughout, and led to detailed discussions about shared compute frameworks and government initiatives.
I would suggest interoperability at every layer… Interoperability encourages participation and in the words of PSA, if you are there in our Bharat, genesision is a meaningful participation… there are alternatives and also provisions for human participation… participation would also ensure that people are part of the process.
Speaker
Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan
Reason
This comment introduced a sophisticated technical and philosophical framework that went beyond infrastructure to address system design principles. The concept of interoperability as enabling participation was particularly insightful, connecting technical architecture to democratic values and human agency.
Impact
This elevated the discussion from purely technical considerations to include governance and human-centered design principles. It influenced subsequent speakers to consider collaboration, choice, and human-in-the-loop approaches, fundamentally broadening the scope of what ‘sovereignty’ means.
95% of AI pilots actually never made it to real production… this is never really a tech problem. It’s really a production problem… A third of CFOs really nowadays, they cannot quantify ROI inside of their organizations… only one out of ten can actually have tools that can actually measure ROI.
Speaker
Brandon Mello
Reason
This comment challenged the prevailing focus on technical capabilities by highlighting that the real barrier to AI adoption is organizational and financial, not technological. The specific statistics about CFOs and ROI measurement provided concrete evidence for a counterintuitive insight.
Impact
This shifted the conversation from ‘how to build AI’ to ‘how to deploy AI successfully.’ It introduced practical business considerations that other panelists hadn’t addressed, leading to discussions about executive sponsorship, organizational alignment, and the need for measurable outcomes.
You need lesser smarter people. So I’m making a very controversial statement. You need lesser people, smarter people. You need engineers more than coders… The big leap is going to be… quantum. Because I think the kind of compute needs you have, and looking at energy GPUs, you could completely change the computational paradigm.
Speaker
Kalyan Kumar
Reason
This was genuinely provocative as it challenged the conventional wisdom about scaling teams and introduced quantum computing as a potential paradigm shift. The distinction between ‘engineers’ and ‘coders’ addressed fundamental questions about skill development and specialization.
Impact
This comment sparked discussion about educational reform and skill development strategies. It also introduced quantum computing as a potential leapfrog technology, adding a forward-looking dimension to the sovereignty discussion and influencing the conversation about long-term strategic planning.
India is creating and consuming 20% of world’s data. One-fifth of the world’s data is created and consumed by India. Only 3% of that data is hosted in India. That shows the upscope of the infrastructure both at the physical data center level and also in terms of the compute or GPU level India need to build.
Speaker
Sunil Gupta
Reason
This statistic powerfully illustrated the sovereignty challenge in concrete terms. The stark contrast between data creation (20%) and data hosting (3%) provided a compelling narrative about digital dependency and the urgency of building domestic infrastructure.
Impact
This data point became a rallying cry for the infrastructure argument and provided quantitative backing for sovereignty concerns. It reinforced the compute infrastructure theme and gave other panelists a concrete reference point for discussing the scale of India’s digital infrastructure needs.
The biggest challenge in not making AI aligned is that we will become products, not even consumers… We want to be in the steering wheel… the key is provenance… Models are glass boxes, because that gives you enough breathing space.
Speaker
Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan
Reason
This comment articulated a profound concern about human agency in AI systems using vivid metaphors (‘products not consumers’, ‘steering wheel’). The concept of ‘provenance’ and ‘glass boxes’ introduced technical solutions to maintain human control and transparency.
Impact
This shifted the final discussion toward ethical and philosophical considerations about AI alignment and human agency. It influenced other panelists to emphasize human-centric approaches and the importance of maintaining choice and control in AI systems.
Overall assessment
These key comments transformed what could have been a generic discussion about AI development into a nuanced exploration of sovereignty that addressed infrastructure, governance, adoption challenges, and human agency. The conversation evolved from identifying India’s AI capabilities to recognizing compute as the critical bottleneck, then expanding to include organizational challenges, skill development needs, and ultimately philosophical questions about human control. The interplay between technical insights (interoperability, quantum computing) and practical concerns (ROI measurement, organizational alignment) created a comprehensive framework for understanding AI sovereignty that went far beyond simple technological nationalism to encompass democratic participation, human agency, and strategic infrastructure development.
Follow-up questions
How to effectively monetize data and establish data products with proper cataloging and contracts?
Speaker
Kalyan Kumar and Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan
Explanation
This addresses the fundamental challenge of transforming data from a raw asset into intellectual property, which is crucial for India’s sovereign AI development and ensuring data creators benefit from their contributions.
How can India scale from thousands to millions of GPUs required for mass AI adoption?
Speaker
Sunil Gupta
Explanation
This is critical for India’s AI infrastructure as current GPU capacity is insufficient for serving 1.4 billion people across multiple AI use cases, and scaling compute infrastructure is essential for sovereign AI capabilities.
How to solve the ROI measurement problem where only 1 out of 10 companies can actually measure AI project returns?
Speaker
Brandon Mello
Explanation
This addresses a fundamental barrier to AI adoption where 95% of AI pilots never reach production, largely due to inability to quantify and measure return on investment.
How to develop quantum computing capabilities to change the computational paradigm for AI?
Speaker
Kalyan Kumar
Explanation
This represents a potential leap in computational efficiency that could address India’s massive compute needs while reducing energy consumption compared to current GPU-based systems.
How to redesign technical education curriculum (BTEC, MTEC, MCA, BCA) to create specialists rather than generalists?
Speaker
Ankit Bose and Kalyan Kumar
Explanation
This addresses the skills gap where current engineering education produces generalists studying 48 subjects in four years without deep specialization, while AI requires domain experts and systems thinkers.
How to ensure provenance and observability at every layer of the AI stack?
Speaker
Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan
Explanation
This is crucial for maintaining human agency and preventing people from becoming products rather than users of AI systems, ensuring transparency and accountability in AI development.
How to build voice-based AI systems that work effectively across India’s diverse languages and dialects?
Speaker
Sunil Gupta and Brandon Mello
Explanation
This addresses India’s unique linguistic diversity and the preference for voice interaction over text, which is essential for making AI accessible to the masses including feature phone users.
How to establish interoperability standards across all layers of the AI stack?
Speaker
Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan
Explanation
This is fundamental to encouraging participation, providing alternatives, and enabling scale-out approaches that can serve India’s diverse needs and prevent vendor lock-in.
How to transition from service-oriented to product-building mindset in India’s tech industry?
Speaker
Kalyan Kumar
Explanation
This addresses the strategic shift needed for India to build sovereign AI capabilities rather than just providing AI services to others, requiring investment in R&D and IP creation.
How to solve data sovereignty when India creates 20% of world’s data but only 3% is hosted domestically?
Speaker
Sunil Gupta
Explanation
This highlights a critical infrastructure gap that affects India’s digital sovereignty and the ability to control its own data destiny for AI development.
Disclaimer: This is not an official session record. DiploAI generates these resources from audiovisual recordings, and they are presented as-is, including potential errors. Due to logistical challenges, such as discrepancies in audio/video or transcripts, names may be misspelled. We strive for accuracy to the best of our ability.
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