In a statement reflecting India’s potential in the technology sector, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani on Thursday expressed confidence that the nation will make significant strides in the intelligence market.
Ambani joined Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang for a fireside chat at the Nvidia AI Summit India, held at Mumbai’s Jio World Convention Centre. The two spoke about what each of their companies has to offer India in this “new industrial revolution”, and why the country is poised to take the lead in the development of AI solutions and its adoption.
Speaking about India’s digital infrastructure, Ambani pointed out that after the US and China, India has the best digital connectivity across 4G, 5G, and broadband.
“We, as a single company, didn’t know anything about this domain. But today, we are the largest data company in the world. Our volumes are equivalent to AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon combined,” he said referring to the rise of RIL telecom arm Jio as the largest telco in the country.
He added that while in countries like the US, customers pay $5 (around Rs 420) per GB of data and the global average is $3.5 (about Rs 295) per GB, in India, it costs roughly 15 cents (Rs 12-13) to consume a GB of data.
“I can assure you that, like we did in data, in a few years from now, we will surprise the world with what India and Indians can achieve in the intelligence market,” Ambani said.
Calling India’s IT prowess a natural resource, Huang said that Nvidia has upskilled 200, 000 IT professionals into the world of AI.
The two also announced a partnership to develop AI infrastructure in the country using Reliance’s digital infrastructure and Nvidia’s expertise in AI.
“In order to lead in artificial intelligence, you need to have AI model technology that India has. You need to have data, massive quantities of data. The last thing you need is AI infrastructure,” Huang said.
The two also spoke of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision for India’s role in the adoption of AI as Jensen recalled the Indian PM’s mandate to him to brief his cabinet on AI a few years back.
“I was so surprised. It was literally the first time any government leader, any national leader asked me to address his cabinet on this particular topic. It was long before anybody was talking about Artificial Intelligence,” he added.
He said that while India had the data infrastructure and scale to leverage AI, it needed AI infrastructure to lead the new technology.
“And the partnership that we have is to start that journey to build the underlying infrastructure so that India could have your own infrastructure. You surely have your own computer science expertise, and you also have your data, you have a giant population of users to drive that flywheel,” said.
In addition, Ambani commended Meta co-founder and chairman Mark Zuckerberg’s contribution towards bringing AI closer to the masses.
“I have again, great respect for my friend Mark Zuckerberg because by bringing open source to the world of intelligence, he has given everybody the opportunity to participate in this revolution,” he said.
