Artificial Intelligence has reached a decisive moment globally. What began as a frontier research pursuit is now shaping economies, public institutions, and everyday life. Yet as AI capabilities advance, a fundamental question confronts policymakers worldwide: can AI be governed and deployed at scale in a way that is inclusive, trusted, and economically productive, especially beyond a small set of advanced economies?

India’s answer to that question is the IndiaAI Mission. For India, AI is not viewed merely as a competitive technology race or a tool for narrow efficiency gains. It is a developmental instrument, one that must work across languages, geographies, income levels, and institutional capacities. In a country of more than 1.4 billion people, success in AI cannot be incremental or exclusive; it must operate at a population scale.

From Digital Public Infrastructure to AI Public Infrastructure

India’s approach to AI is deeply shaped by its experience with Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). Platforms such as Aadhaar, UPI, and DigiLocker demonstrated that when digital systems are built as interoperable, open, and trusted public goods, they can unlock innovation across the private sector while directly empowering citizens.

AI, in India’s view, requires a similar architectural mindset. Rather than treating AI as a collection of isolated pilots or proprietary deployments, the IndiaAI Mission is building AI as public infrastructure—shared foundations that reduce entry barriers for innovators and ensure broad-based adoption. This includes compute capacity, datasets, foundational and sectoral models, application frameworks, skills pipelines, and governance institutions.

The objective is straightforward: no startup, researcher, or public agency should need to solve the same foundational problems repeatedly. Innovation should happen at the application and impact layer, not be constrained by access to compute or data.

Clear Milestones, Not Abstract Ambitions The IndiaAI Mission is anchored in measurable outcomes. At the core is the development of indigenous foundation models. India is currently funding 12 national projects to build robust Indian foundation models, designed to reflect Indian languages, contexts, and public- service needs. These are complemented by small language models (SLMs) tailored for specific sectors such as healthcare, education, and scientific research, where efficiency, deployability, and explainability matter as much as scale.

Equally important is the application layer. The Mission aims to see at least 50 high-impact AI applications developed and deployed across public services and priority sectors. These are not experimental prototypes; they are intended for real-world use in areas such as healthcare delivery, agricultural advisory systems, education access, logistics, and governance.

Ultimately, India measures success through adoption. When AI-enabled services built under the Mission are used by 100 million citizens, particularly in essential services, it will mark a meaningful shift from technology deployment to societal impact.

Democratising Compute Through Market-Led Partnerships Access to compute has emerged globally as one of the most binding constraints in AI development. India’s response has been to combine public policy leadership with private-sector scale. India’s national AI compute pool currently comprises 38,000 GPUs, with over 24,000 already installed and deployed. This capacity is expanding rapidly, with an additional 20,000–25,000 GPUs being added in the near term and a clear path toward 100,000 GPUs within the next year.

What is distinctive is not just the scale, but the model. Fourteen private-sector players have built this infrastructure, with cumulative investments expected to exceed INR 25,000 crore in a single year. Government funding, over INR 10,000 crore committed so far, has acted as a catalyst rather than a substitute for private capital. By subsidising end usage, fully covering compute costs for foundation model development and partially subsidising application development, the Mission has aligned incentives toward real deployment and value creation.

Data as a Global-Grade Public Resource

AI systems are only as capable as the data they are trained on. To avoid fragmentation and duplication, India has created AI Kosh, a national data and model platform designed as a shared resource for startups, researchers, and institutions. In less than a year, AI Kosh has grown to include over 7,000 datasets, 400 open-source models, and a growing suite of tools for anonymisation, privacy preservation, and responsible data use. The ambition is to scale this to 20,000 datasets within a year, creating one of the most diverse and representative AI-ready data ecosystems globally.

For international observers, AI Kosh offers an important lesson: data governance and innovation need not be in tension. With the right architectural choices, data can be shared responsibly while preserving sovereignty and trust.

Trust, Safety, and Sovereignty as First Principles

India’s AI strategy recognises that scale without trust is unsustainable. Issues such as algorithmic bias, misinformation, deepfakes, and systemic risk are not peripheral concerns; they directly affect democratic institutions and social stability. India’s approach to AI governance, therefore, prioritises trust-by-design. Indigenous models are evaluated on globally recognised benchmarks, while governance institutions ensure transparency, accountability, explainability, and resilience.

At the strategic level, India is committed to building sovereign AI capabilities, models and systems that can be hosted, audited, and governed within national jurisdiction. This is not a rejection of openness or collaboration, but a recognition that strategic autonomy is essential in a fragmented geopolitical environment.

A Perspective from the Global South

As AI governance discussions increasingly shape global forums, India brings a perspective informed by scale, diversity, and development realities. Many of the world’s emerging economies face similar challenges: limited access to compute, data concentration, skills gaps, and concerns about unequal value capture. India’s experience suggests that AI does not have to deepen global asymmetries. With the right public infrastructure, policy frameworks, and partnerships, AI can become a force multiplier for inclusion and growth—particularly in healthcare, education, agriculture, and public service delivery.

A Global Convening Moment: The India AI Impact Summit

As these ideas move from national policy into global practice, India is also creating space for collective dialogue and collaboration. The India AI Impact Summit, hosted in New Delhi, is envisioned as a platform where governments, industry leaders, researchers, and civil society from across the world, particularly the Global South, can engage on how AI can deliver measurable outcomes for people, planet, and progress.

Building on earlier global AI dialogues, the Summit brings to the forefront issues that are often underrepresented in frontier AI debates: population-scale deployment, multilingual access, sustainability, workforce transitions, and public-interest AI. More than a conference, it is intended as a working forum, focused on translating principles into deployable frameworks, partnerships, and shared learning.

Building for India, Relevant for the World

To AI builders and policymakers globally, India’s message is both pragmatic and optimistic. Solutions that can function across India’s complexity, multiple languages, vast populations, varied connectivity, and institutional scale are likely to be relevant far beyond its borders. AI systems built for India are, by necessity, designed for resilience, efficiency, and inclusion.

Also Read | India AI at a Defining Moment

The IndiaAI Mission is therefore not just a national programme, but an experiment in how AI can be built and governed for the global majority. If AI can work at a population scale in India, it can work anywhere.

Views Expressed By: Abhishek Singh, CEO, IndiaAI Mission; Additional Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & IT, Government of India

Be a part of Elets Collaborative Initiatives. Join Us for Upcoming Events and explore business opportunities. Like us on Facebook , connect with us on LinkedIn and follow us on Twitter, Instagram.

"Exciting news! Elets technomedia is now on WhatsApp Channels Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest insights!" Click here!