By Raju Vegesna
The artificial intelligence (AI) landscape is undergoing a seismic shift, with global economies making aggressive moves to secure their dominance. The US has committed over $500 billion (Stargate Project) to bolster its AI capabilities, while China’s DeepSeek is already rolling out cost-effective AI models, pushing the country years ahead in AI development. Meanwhile, AI chip shortages have forced companies to build their own, with OpenAI recently partnering with a Taiwanese firm for semiconductor manufacturing.
Amid this global AI arms race, India’s AI Mission, recently unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is a pivotal intervention. It underscores India’s ambition to be more than just an AI consumer—India aims to be a global force in AI innovation, skilling, and deployment.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address at the AI Action Summit in Paris underscored India’s ambition to be more than just an AI consumer – India aims to be a global force in AI innovation, skilling, and deployment. Co-chairing discussions with French President Emmanuel Macron, Modi highlighted how AI can address global challenges, from enhancing healthcare access to mitigating climate change. The summit emphasised the importance of responsible AI governance, ethical AI deployment, and public-service AI solutions.
India’s active participation in the Paris Summit reinforces its commitment to responsible and inclusive AI. The country is also strengthening AI ties with France, particularly through the La French Tech network, helping Indian startups gain access to AI-driven analytics, automation, and computing infrastructure.
While the US and China dominate AI investments, their rivalry is creating ripples that benefit the world. This competition accelerates innovation, infrastructure investments, and talent development, opening doors for countries like India to carve out a strong niche. India is uniquely positioned to capitalise on the AI revolution.
How, you may ask? In the global AI race, foundational model development is capital-intensive, requiring vast computational power, data, and infrastructure investments. While only a handful of countries have the resources to build these models, India is uniquely positioned to dominate AI inferencing – the process of applying pre-trained AI models to solve industry-specific challenges.
India has successfully played this role before. When enterprise software giants like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft built foundational platforms, India leveraged them to create a multi-billion-dollar IT services industry, excelling in implementation, customisation, and managed services.
AI presents a similar opportunity. Instead of competing to build AI models, India can lead the deployment, adaptation, and scaling of AI solutions globally. AI inferencing will power real-world applications in, business automation, intelligent customer experiences, predictive analytics and AI-driven decision-making.
With a vast AI and data science talent pool, a robust IT services industry, and a thriving startup ecosystem, India can emerge as the world’s premier AI implementation hub, generating billions in economic value and millions of high-skilled jobs.
India’s AI revolution is not about catching up – it is about leading where it matters most. The country is poised to build a multi-billion-dollar AI services industry, unlocking vast opportunities across sectors:
AI for public services: AI-driven governance can enhance digital identity verification, smart city infrastructure, and automation in public administration – improving efficiency and citizen services at scale.
AI in healthcare: AI-assisted diagnostics, predictive analytics, and personalised treatment plans can significantly reduce healthcare costs while improving patient outcomes. India has the potential to become a global leader in AI-powered medical research, telemedicine, and digital health services.
AI in agriculture: AI-powered analytics can optimise crop yields, reduce water consumption, and enhance supply chain efficiency. AI-driven advisory platforms can transform farm productivity and sustainability.
AI for sustainability: AI-enabled climate models can improve disaster response planning, optimise energy grids, and drive efficiency in India’s renewable energy sector.
AI-led IT and business services: AI inferencing will create massive demand for AI implementation, customisation, and managed services – industries where India’s IT and consulting giants already have a competitive edge.
AI-powered workforce transformation: The AI revolution will create demand for AI engineers, AI consultants, prompt engineers, model trainers, AI ethics specialists. India can become the world’s AI talent hub, supplying businesses with AI-ready professionals at scale.
The Indian government has invested over $1 billion in the IndiaAI Mission, with four semiconductor projects underway worth ₹1.5 trillion. These projects aim to reduce reliance on imports for critical hardware while supporting the creation of essential machine learning tools. Additionally, India’s skilled and cost-effective talent pool of software developers and engineers positions the country as a natural AI powerhouse, attracting global R&D centres and multinational investments.
With a deep software services industry, a world-class IT workforce, and a thriving startup ecosystem, India can position itself as the go-to destination for AI deployment, managed AI services, and enterprise AI solutions. Much like India built an industry around SAP, Microsoft, and enterprise IT, AI inferencing can create the next big wave of economic growth, propelling the nation into a leadership position in AI-driven transformation across industries.
India’s AI moment is here. The question is not if India will lead – but how fast we, in India, can scale.
The writer is chairman, Sify Technologies.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal and do not reflect the official position or policy of FinancialExpress.com. Reproducing this content without permission is prohibited.
