The big news in India last week was the India AI Impact Summit 2026 held from 16 to 21 February in New Delhi. Originally slated as a five-day affair, it was extended by a day in view of the rush of visitors.
I am a tech enthusiast, especially when it comes to cutting-edge tools that actually touch the lives of ordinary people like us. So, I was keenly following the proceedings. There was live streaming on YouTube and maximim coverage in newspapers.
No doubt this was a blockbuster event that showcased India as the emerging force in the new Artificial Intelligence era.
BIG NAMES AND NUMBERS
There was a fair amount of hype and publicity, no doubt. That was natural considering around 100 nations participated and there were over 250,000 visitors.
The summit was a "who’s who" of global power, featuring Heads of State or Government from France, the Netherlands, Swiss Confederation, Spain, Finland, Serbia, Estonia, Mauritius, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and UN Secretary-General, besides of course India’s Prime Minister who was the host.
Tech honchos were in full strength. Every big company was there: Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic, TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Accenture, IBM, KPMG, Zoom, Ericsson, OpenUK, Salesforce, World Economic forum, HCL, Qualcomm, Razorpay, Cisco, NVIDIA, Biocon Group, Coursera … you name it. Many companies were represented by multiple people.
INNOVATIONS AND INVESTMENTS
There were so many interesting exhibits. Here are a few of them.
BharatGen -- India's first government-funded, sovereign, multilingual, and multimodal Large Language Model (LLM) initiative.
Bhashini 2.0 -- Another government initiative, which focuses on building advanced, secure, and scalable multilingual applications for Indian languages.
Then there were the Kaze Smartglasses from Bengaluru-based Sarvam AI, which allow users to interact with the world through AI.
The most interesting was an AI-powered air taxi. It is a collaboration between The ePlane Company and IIT Madras. This electric vertical take-off and landing (e-VTOL) craft promises to turn a one hour traffic crawl into an eight-minute flight.
There were a slew of announcements. Google announced setting up of an AI hub in Visakhapatnam, which will house gigawatt-scale computers and a new international subsea gateway.
There were many similar announcements -- by other big companies like OpenAI, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Anthropic, etc. -- of either major tie-ups with Indian companies or opening of India offices.
All this will open up massive opportunities for the huge number of tech professionals in India. Investments running into billions, which have been committed, will also add to India’s IT infrastructure.
EXECUTION IS EVERYTHING
The summit painted a beautiful picture of the future, but it is important to remember that we aren’t there yet. As the old idiom goes, “There's many a slip between the cup and the lip.”
Here is why I am saying that:
In Bengaluru, we’ve been hearing about a "Common Mobility Card" for the metro and buses for over a decade. It’s a standard feature in many cities around the world. Yet here, despite our world-class tech prowess, it remains a "work in progress".
National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) is a government of India initiative launched in 2019. In 2023, the Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation introduced the NCMC, but till today the authorities have not been able to make it available for the bus commuters!
It’s not a lack of technical skill; it’s definitely because of some "extraneous" reasons, I have no clue about.
In the health sector, we have seen brilliant startups creating the technology for "portable" digital patient records. To be fair, there has been some progress. But the predominant reality on the ground is when you go to a different hospital or even the branch of the same hospital in another city, you start from scratch with a fresh set of expensive tests because the computer systems are not integrated.
A third example is air taxi services between Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport and the two big tech hubs in the city (Electronics City and IT Park) which are around at least two hours by car from the airport. There have been multiple attempts on this front by different companies. Quite possibly because of lack of economic viability, they haven't really taken off.
In the apartment I live, though I have a high-speed wi-fi network which enables me to get connected to anywhere in the world, the mobile phone and internet connectivity is so poor that the cellphone works like our good old fixed line telephone. The calls can be made and received only from certain spots close to the balcony!
DOWNSIDE OF THE AI SUMMIT
The AI summit had its fair share of cringe moments that sort of served as a reality check. The most infamous was the Galgotias University "robodog" bungle.
The university spokesperson claimed that a Chinese Unitree robot was an "in-house innovation". The ever-vigilant netizens called it out immediately, and it became a global embarrassment.
This incident shifted the whole focus from AI to the quality of education in India, especially higher education. It led to discussions on how commercialised education in India has become, and how college managements try to go for hype and publicity rather than focus on actual learning by students. Many were just hoping that various college and university managements would learn a lesson from what happened to Galgotias University.
Then there was the widely publicised crashing of Wi-Fi at the summit, how food stalls accepted only cash payments, long queues to get to the venue, valuables being stolen, etc. There were also complaints of widespread traffic chaos, with vehicular movement being held up for a very long time for VIPs to pass. All these pointed to something that is quite familiar here: organisational mismanagement.
India's Minister for Electronics and IT apologised, and it looks like from day 2, it was a better experience.
JOURNEY HAS ONLY BEGUN
No doubt, the India AI Impact Summit was undeniably a success at many levels, especialy in terms of intent and investment. The conclave highlighted that India is no longer the world's backoffice. Science and technology has made tremendous progress making a whole lot of difference to people's quality of life.
But it has to be remembered at the same time that the true "impact" of this AI summit is not in the number of visitors or the big names who graced the occasion or the amount of investments promised.
Succeess will be measured by whether that air taxi not only actually takes flight over Bengaluru but also becomes a regular transport service; and whether an AI model can finally help a small-town doctor save a life.
We’ve seen the pathway to the future. Now, it's time to walk it and reach the destination.
India clearly wants to position itself as a global AI hub, and the energy is undeniable.
ReplyDelete