According to secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), India should aim to become the global use case capital for artificial intelligence (AI). He further added that the government is adopting a balanced approach by remaining open to international players while simultaneously developing sovereign AI capabilities.
Addressing concerns over the concentration of AI infrastructure among a few firms, particularly in chip manufacturing, he said India is following a technology-agnostic procurement approach. He pointed out that developments such as DeepSeek show AI development does not necessarily have to be as expensive as earlier believed.
Furthermore, he noted that India’s key distinction compared to many other countries is its continued focus on remaining an open system. He added that building sovereign capabilities in AI and achieving strategic autonomy is also in the larger global interest.
He emphasised that the democratisation of AI will not only depend on models and compute but also on real-world applications where revenue generation will happen. He compared the opportunity to a defining moment for transformation, similar to what the IT industry experienced earlier.
Responding to comparisons with the $500 billion AI investment announced in the US, he clarified that such investments are largely private-sector driven and are not confined to a single geography. He cited recent announcements by Google, Microsoft and AWS in India totalling around $70 billion over the past few months.
He also said the government is working on sovereign cloud capacity for AI meant for government use and certain restricted user categories, with multiple companies already offering such solutions.
Additionally, on semiconductors, he highlighted that around 20 per cent of the global semiconductor design workforce is based in India. He added that fabs and advanced packaging units being developed under the India Semiconductor Mission are receiving orders, with some planning to export their entire production.
