India poised to lead next phase of AI revolution: Nandan Nilekani
New Delhi, Aug 6 (IANS) India is positioned to lead the next phase of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution by building real-world applications at scale rather than competing in the race for advanced chips and large language models, Nandan Nilekani — head of the national examination and testing system and co-founder of Infosys — said on Thursday.
Speaking at NCAER India Policy Forum 2026 here, Nilekani said the value in AI will increasingly shift from infrastructure to applications, creating a significant opportunity for India.
“The Western focus on AI is on infrastructure like larger models, more chips, more data centres. But infrastructure eventually gets commoditised. The value shifts to the application layer, and India can become the AI use-case capital of the world,” according to him.
Nilekani said that India’s experience in building digital public infrastructure (DPI) offers a strong foundation for deploying AI solutions across sectors such as agriculture, healthcare and education at population scale.
The country’s biggest AI opportunity lies in making the technology accessible through Indian languages and voice-based interfaces, according to him.
He also stressed that AI should be used to solve practical challenges facing citizens rather than focusing solely on developing frontier models.
Nilekani highlighted that India expanded from fewer than 10,000 startups a decade ago to around 150,000 now.
If the ecosystem continues to grow at about 20 per cent annually, the country could have more than one million startups by 2035, he added.
However, he argued that smaller enterprises are likely to be the primary creators of jobs in the AI era, as large organisations with highly structured processes are more vulnerable to automation.
“We have to rethink how jobs get created. It may not be one company employing a million people, but a million companies employing one person each,” he said.
On labour market reforms, Nilekani said India needs portable social security benefits, including pensions, insurance and healthcare, that remain with workers as they move between employers, gig work and entrepreneurship.
Recently, the government appointed Nilekani to lead a powerful task force tasked with reforming India’s testing systems and examinations.
–IANS
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