Indian IT Doesn’t Seem to Care Enough About IndiaAI Mission
India’s mission to build sovereign AI is slowly taking shape. Through its IndiaAI Mission initiative, the government has so far selected four startups and more than a dozen infrastructure and data centre companies to build the foundation. In all of this, Indian IT firms seem to be absent, at least for now. Since 2023, firms like TCS, Wipro and Infosys have partnered with NVIDIA to train hundreds of thousands of employees and boost their AI capabilities for enterprise offerings. However, apart from building solutions for the clients, Indian IT firms did not come out to build a product apart from one, Project Indus from Tech Mahindra. Though Tata Communications is also part of the IndiaAI Mission for acquiring compute, the larger IT arm of the Tata firm seems to care less—or perhaps, is ignored by the IndiaAI Mission as it is not focused on building products. Since Indian IT firms focus on outsourcing the R&D themselves, the government does not seem to be interested in funding these companies, which can easily acquire GPUs and capabilities themselves at market prices. In other words, policy-makers seem determined that public subsidies go to startups and research teams, not to establish multibillion-dollar service providers. Startup founders, on the other hand, have welcomed this focus on fledgling companies. They point out that government backing through GPUs, grants, and mentorship can slash their costs dramatically, with hundreds of proposals rolling in. Meanwhile, Indian IT doesn’t seem to be keen on building foundational models anyway. What Will Indian IT Do? In recent years, Indian IT firms have partnered with AI startups like Sarvam, Yellow.ai, and several others to build AI capabilities rather than innovating it for themselves. Though it’s not as if the IT firms do not invest in R&D, their core business remains providing services, which the IndiaAI Mission is not focusing on right now. It is possible that Indian IT firms might later partner with the selected startups or use their foundational LLMs to provide solutions for clients. On the other hand, startups from the West are already partnering with the IndiaAI Mission to fast-track progress and take the upper hand in the Indian ecosystem. For example, after OpenAI’s Stargate was thought to be a threat to the IndiaAI Mission, just a week later, it announced a partnership with the government to fund non-profits and scale AI education. This could have been an ideal way forward for Indian IT as well, given its understanding and familiarity with the country, but things didn’t unfold that way. Nevertheless, India’s big IT firms have been aggressively building their own AI capabilities. Wipro committed $1 billion over three years to expand its AI platform and cloud offerings, while Infosys and TCS each launched new generative AI platforms, Topaz and WisdomNext, respectively. Read: Indian IT Loves AI Washing Each of these incumbents also has in-house AI R&D labs and venture funds. However, these efforts are aimed at enhancing their enterprise services and client solutions, not at developing India-specific foundational models under the government’s scheme. In fact, IT industry insiders note that these firms have traditionally avoided core-product R&D. As Mohandas Pai, Infosys co-founder and industry veteran, earlier told AIM, Indian IT services companies are not product companies; they focus on custom vertical solutions, not building horizontal AI models like Building an LLM requires significant capital, time, a massive computing facility and a market—all of which India did not have until now. Moreover, even if firms like TCS or Infosys had the funds all along, their strategy remains service-driven. Established IT players often partner with global tech companies like Google, Microsoft, or NVIDIA for AI solutions. They may prefer to commercialise international breakthroughs rather than build home-grown models themselves. Companies like TCS or HCLTech could contribute computing infrastructure, large industry datasets, or training programs under IndiaAI’s umbrella. Also read: How NVIDIA is Helping Indian IT Become AI-First Companies Why IndiaAI is Different While existing firms excel at integrating and deploying technology for clients, their new AI platforms are being used to streamline enterprise processes or add AI ‘agents’ for businesses. However, the IndiaAI Mission explicitly pitches itself as India’s own LLM incubator. It is targeting ethnic language coverage, vernacular chatbots, India-specific datasets, etc, or in other words, building AI for Bharat. Sarvam, Soket AI, Gnani AI, and Gan AI have highlighted that IndiaAI-backed models will tackle challenges—multilingual support in government services, local healthcare data, etc—that global tech giants haven’t fully addressed. Indian IT, on the other hand, arguably, does not have significant monetary benefits from building Indic language AI. Similarly, 10 Indian AI startups such as CoRover, Staqu, SatSure, Secure Blink, and others, were selected for a four-month global acceleration with Station F, the world’s largest startup campus based in Paris. Notably, all are young tech ventures, with no presence from established giants like Infosys, TCS or Wipro. Government leaders have hinted that incumbents should adapt rather than expect subsidies. At one IndiaAI event, IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw declared, “The entire ecosystem is being built right now in AI, and the IT industry should capture this transition as an opportunity.” No government official has publicly criticised the IT majors for stepping back. Instead, the message is that anyone is welcome to participate via open calls. So far, however, only startups and data centres seem to have done so. Notably, Indian IT veterans like Nandan Nilekani, Narayana Murthy, and others have largely ignored the idea of building foundational models and instead focused on building use cases for the Indian population—a view that implies that it’s premature for even major companies to tackle this task. Industry leaders like HCLTech and Infosys CEOs note that the legacy IT companies are “adjusting their business models” to GenAI, focusing on cloud and enterprise AI, rather than launching independent generative products of their own That said, as the mission unfolds, there remains scope for the IT majors to engage—whether by offering infrastructure, skilling or co-innovation.
No government official has publicly criticised the IT majors for stepping back.
Indian IT firms might later partner with the selected startups or use their foundational LLMs to provide solutions for clients.
[]
["GenAI", "OpenAI", "AI", "chatbots", "ML", "RAG", "Ray", "Aim", "generative AI", "R"]
["AI", "ML", "generative AI", "GenAI", "OpenAI", "Aim", "Ray", "RAG", "chatbots", "R"]
Mohit writes about AI in simple, explainable, and often funny words. He's especially passionate about chatting with those building AI for Bharat, with the occasional detour into AGI.