New Delhi: In a move to cement India’s position on the global technology map, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday engaged with the vanguard of the country’s artificial intelligence sector. The roundtable, attended by top executives from startups specializing in everything from multilingual LLMs to healthcare diagnostics, served as a precursor to next month’s global AI summit.
The Prime Minister laid out a vision for a unique Indian AI framework that is distinct from global counterparts.
Language & Content: He suggested that Indian models must move beyond English-centricity to promote indigenous content and regional languages.
Ethics & Privacy: Highlighting the “world’s trust” as India’s greatest asset, the PM stressed that AI development must be unbiased, ethical, and rooted in data privacy principles.
Frugal Innovation: India can lead the world in affordable and inclusive AI, leveraging its capacity for large-scale implementation and “frugal innovation”.
The 12 startups present had qualified under the Foundation Model Pillar of the upcoming summit. These companies are currently working in diverse, high-impact sectors:
Generative AI & 3D: Firms like Avataar and Gan are transforming e-commerce and personalized marketing.
Language Tech: BharatGen, Sarvam, and Gnani are building robust speech-to-text and multilingual capabilities.
Enterprise & Research: Fractal, Tech Mahindra, and Zenteiq are pushing the boundaries of data-driven decision-making and engineering simulations.
Specialized AI: Intellihealth (healthcare), Genloop, Shodh AI, and Soket AI were also among the elite group presenting their work.
During the discussion, startup founders observed that the centre of gravity for AI innovation is beginning to shift toward India, supported by a “robust and enabling environment” fostered by the government. The PM assured them of full state support, describing them as the “co-architects of India’s future”.
The meeting was also attended by Union Minister for Electronics and IT, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw, and Minister of State Shri Jitin Prasada, underscoring the government’s top-down commitment to the AI ecosystem.