From Aadhaar to Sarvam: Where are we Indians at AI?
Mehak Khudania
LinkedIn Top Voice | Assistant Manager at Investor Clinic | Tax Blogger at TAXO | Content Writer | Finance Enthusiastic | Start-ups & Technology |
Yesterday, I wrote about China’s DeepSeek—a $50B AI juggernaut racing toward artificial general intelligence.
here is the link, if you missed the article: What is DeepSeek?
But as I typed, my mind wandered to a tea stall in Mumbai, where a farmer checked his crop prices via a WhatsApp voice note.
That’s India’s AI moment......Boom!!
We built Aadhaar for 1.4 billion people at ?100 per head. We vaccinated a billion with CoWIN, a platform now used from Jamaica to Iran. And we taught the world to pay with QR codes.
So why is India still an AI underdog?
Because the world measures AI in GPUs and trillion-parameter models, India measures it in voices understood, crops saved, and lives uplifted.
Here’s why that might redefine the game.
The Frugal Tech Legacy: Proof Scale Meets Simplicity
India’s genius lies in turning constraints into revolutions:
Yet, in AI, India’s 7.8B market is dwarfed by China(150B) and the U.S. ($300B). The gap?
Chips, talent, and ambition?
Let's dive each one of the factors one by one....!!!!
Chips? From Import Addiction to Design Disruption
India imports 90% of its semiconductors, relying on U.S. GPUs and Taiwanese fabs.
But here’s the twist: 30% of the engineers designing those chips are Indian.
Startups like Mindgrove now craft RISC-V processors for rice fields, not data centers—at 1/10,000th of NVIDIA’s budget.
The lesson? Skip the fab race; own the design for “India-fit” chips: low-cost, rugged, and built for monsoon soils, not metaverse fantasies.
AI Models? Skip the Arms Race, Own the Last Mile
While Silicon Valley obsesses over GPT-5,
Chennai’s Sarvam AI trains voice chatbots for WhatsApp, costing 1/10th per query.
Why???????
Because 600 million Indians engage via voice notes, not text. Meanwhile, Jugalbandi, a government chatbot, explains welfare schemes in Mundari—a tribal language ignored by Google.
India’s AI mantra: Build for the village, and the world will adapt.
Education? Fixing the Broken Pipeline
India produces 2.5 million STEM grads yearly but trails in AI talent.
Blame it on 85% of schools lacking computers and teachers who’ve never coded.
领英推荐
Yet, startups like GUVI teach AI in Tamil and Hindi, while the government’s NEP 2020 nudges coding into classrooms.
The fix?
Treat AI like Aadhaar—a public good, not a privilege.
The UPI Playbook? Scale AI Like Chai for All
UPI’s magic wasn’t tech—it was trust. A tea seller with a QR code became India’s fintech mascot. For AI, the recipe is similar:
The Global South’s Plea: “Lead Us”
At the G20, France’s Macron urged India to “democratize AI for the Global South.”
Why?
Because India’s chaos—22 languages, 700 million rural users, 100 dialects—is a testing ground for humanity. If an AI model works in Odisha’s tribal hamlets, it’ll work in Senegal’s villages.
The AI Manifesto
Sam Altman, once called India’s AI efforts “hopeless.”
Last week, Sarvam AI raised $41 million to build voice LLMs for 500 million Indians.
The world laughs until India delivers.
As Nandan Nilekani, architect of Aadhaar and Sarvam’s backer, says:
“We don’t need to chase GPT-5. We need AI that knows ‘mitti’ (soil), ‘bimaar’ (sickness), and ‘bhasha’ (language). Solve for Bharat, and the planet follows.”
Call to Action: Rewrite the Rules
Why This Matters?
From Davos to Delhi’s tech meetups, everyone debates India’s AI potential.
This isn’t just about catching up—it’s about proving that frugal, inclusive innovation can outpace trillion-dollar giants.
The chai stall’s QR code was the start. The voice chatbot is next.