India's AI Advancement Accelerates Amid PM's Discussions with Tech Leaders

As India aims for a global leadership role in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has held discussions with prominent tech leaders in recent days, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, former Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, and Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, to bring these plans to fruition.

During his meeting with Modi on Monday, Nadella expressed Microsoft's commitment to positioning India as an AI-first nation and expanding its services in the country. The following day, at an event in Bengaluru, Microsoft revealed plans to invest $3 billion in India and also aims to equip 10 million people with AI skills by 2030.

This discussion had taken place a few days back, between January 4, Modi met Sikka, ex-CEO of Infosys, affirming India's promise to head in AI.

On this note, they have also had a talk during the Prime Minister and Aravind Srinivas, co-founder, and CEO of Perplexity about AI applications and evolving AI.

According to the data received from the market intelligence firm Tracxn, the number of AI tech companies in India, which is now offering AI as a service or AI infrastructure is 706. These companies have approximately raised 2.27 billion dollars as equity funding in these five years according to Tracxn and in trends year on year.

In March 2024, the Union Cabinet sanctioned a national-level IndiaAI mission costing Rs. 10,371.92 crore for the financial year 2024-25. An allocation of Rs 551.75 crore from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology was made for that year. Rs 551.75 crore was allocated to the Ministry of Electronics and IT for the fiscal year 2024-25. The mission is designed to advance AI-related developments across the country.

Shailesh Haribhakti, the chairman of Shailesh Haribhakti Ecosystem, an AI-led productivity enhancement and sustainability firm, said, “While our GDP growth is hovering around 6-7 per cent, our tax growth is almost twice that number. The country is rapidly financialising its economy and the intelligence and information flow is extraordinary which has also led to rapid discovery of attempts at evasion.”

Anirudh Bhardwaj, chief technology officer at Recur Club, a debt financing marketplace, said, “With the IndiaAI mission, a lot of investment is going to get into infrastructure, computing, and research and innovation. The ease of access to computes will help fin-tech companies like us to leverage AI securely by means of local LLMs as we aim towards becoming an AI native debt marketplace.”

Companies such as Glance, owned by ad-tech unicorn InMobi, Fractal, an AI services provider; and Krutrim, an AI startup founded by Bhavish Aggarwal, achieved Unicorn status in 2020, 2022, and 2024, respectively.