India Launches Major AI Summit to Champion Global South Interests
India is making a bold statement in the international artificial intelligence arena this week by hosting one of the world's largest AI gatherings. The event positions the nation as a leading voice for the global South in a field historically dominated by the United States and China. The five-day India–AI Impact Summit is taking place at New Delhi's expansive Bharat Mandapam complex, attracting an estimated 250,000 participants.
Global Leaders and Tech Titans Gather in Delhi
Delegations from over 45 countries, including leaders from 20 nations, are attending the landmark summit. The guest list features prominent technology executives such as Sam Altman and Sundar Pichai, alongside policymakers, investors, and researchers from around the world. This gathering marks the first time a major global AI summit has been hosted in a developing country, following previous editions in the United Kingdom, South Korea, and France.
The summit's organisers have made their mission clear with prominent messaging throughout the venue: "Democratising AI for a Billion+ Indians." This theme underscores India's ambition to make artificial intelligence accessible and beneficial for its vast population.
Showcasing Innovation Across Sectors
Inside the sprawling event halls, visitors encounter a vibrant display of technological innovation. Robots serve coffee while startups demonstrate voice assistants trained in various Indian languages. Exhibits range from AI tools designed to decode traditional Ayurvedic medicine to systems aimed at combating deepfakes and online scams—significant challenges for India's growing internet user base.
Immersive digital installations reimagine the Hindu epic Mahabharata using AI-generated scenes, while displays from global technology giants stand alongside those of early-stage Indian entrepreneurs hoping to challenge Silicon Valley's dominance.
India's Strategic Advantages and Challenges
According to Stanford University research, India currently ranks third globally in AI competitiveness, trailing only the United States and China. Government officials argue that the country's established digital public infrastructure—including biometric identity systems and online payment networks—provides a significant advantage in scaling AI applications across governance, healthcare, education, and agriculture.
"By overlaying AI over existing digital identity, payment rails as well as health care, education and governance stacks, India is attempting to compress decades of development into years," explained Abhishek Singh, additional secretary at the Ministry of Electronics and IT, during a pre-summit briefing.
The government's strategy emphasizes affordability and accessibility, prioritizing the development of small, sector-specific models designed to accommodate India's rich linguistic diversity. BharatGen, a government-backed AI model, is expected to unveil new capabilities supporting 22 different Indian languages later this week.
Practical Applications and Global Potential
Demonstrations at the summit highlight practical applications of AI technology. One exhibition featured a robotic arm showing how technicians in remote clinics could scan patients' abdomens while artificial intelligence flagged potential anomalies before doctors confirmed diagnoses.
"If we can do things at population scale, there is no scale that we can't beat in the world," said Sandhya Ramachandran Arun from Wipro technology, suggesting that India's innovations could serve as examples for other nations. She emphasized how AI could bridge gaps in specialist medical care by connecting remote Indian clinics with doctors in major urban centers.
The Hardware Challenge and Strategic Debates
Despite India's advantages in talent and data, the advanced semiconductors powering cutting-edge AI systems remain largely controlled by American companies. This reality has sparked strategic debates about India's optimal path forward in the AI race.
Martin Willcox, global head of analytics at Teradata, cautioned against equating competitiveness with training the largest models. "There is no good AI without good data," he noted, suggesting that open-source systems often lag behind proprietary models by only months. "A good model that I can score quickly and cost effectively is better, nine times out of 10, than the best model that I can't get out of the lab and into production."
Mandar Kulkarni, National Security Officer for India and South Asia at Microsoft, suggested India's advantage might lie not in winning the race for the largest model, but in deploying AI effectively across sectors at scale. "If we insist that every layer has to be Indian, then we will probably have to wait," he observed, while acknowledging legitimate concerns about technological dependence.
Balancing Innovation with Governance
Pier Stefano Sailer of KPMG framed the central debate as balancing "openness versus security... speed of innovation versus governance... global integration versus autonomy." He suggested India could potentially chart a middle path between Europe's regulatory emphasis and America's innovation-first model.
Outside the summit venue, traffic restrictions stretch across central Delhi as security measures tighten. Inside, banners repeating the themes of "People, Planet and Progress" hang beneath towering portraits of the prime minister. Delegations move between closed-door meetings and public sessions addressing AI safety, inclusion, and governance.
The fundamental question remains whether democratising access to AI for 1.4 billion people can translate into genuine technological leadership, or whether the next phase of the global AI race will still be defined by who controls the most powerful models and the hardware that runs them.
