India’s AI strategy should prioritise real-world applications over costly infrastructure, leveraging digital public infrastructure to drive inclusive, large-scale adoption across sectors.
India should focus on becoming a global leader in applied artificial intelligence rather than competing in the capital-intensive race to build AI infrastructure, Infosys co-founder and chairman, Nandan Nilekani said on Thursday, adding that the country’s strength lies in deploying AI at population scale through its digital public infrastructure (DPI).
Speaking at the NCAER India Policy Forum 2026 in the Capital, Nilekani said that while global technology companies were investing billions of dollars in data centres, chips and computing power to build larger AI models, India’s opportunity was to make AI work for millions of people through practical applications.
Describing AI as a general-purpose technology comparable to electricity or railways, Nilekani said India could replicate the success of its DPI stack by making AI accessible and inclusive. A key priority, he said, should be expanding voice-based AI across Indian languages, regional dialects and colloquial speech patterns such as Hinglish to bring more people into the digital economy.
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