India is rapidly emerging as a global AI hub through strong government support and startup innovation.
The IndiaAI Mission is expanding compute infrastructure and datasets to empower researchers and entrepreneurs.
Focus on quality data, affordable GPUs, and cross-sector adoption is driving world-class AI development.
India Has Become the World’s Third Biggest AI Ecosystem: IndiaAI Mission CEO
From adding 20,000 GPUs to expanding the AI Kosh datasets platform, IndiaAI Mission CEO Abhishek Singh lays out how the government is building a shared infrastructure for startups and researchers.
Summary
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India may have entered the global AI race later than some of its peers, but it has covered remarkable ground in a short span today ranking as the world's third-largest AI ecosystem, after the US and China. A thriving startup culture and one of the world's largest pools of tech-savvy talent have been the driving forces.
But just as critical has been the government's role in laying the foundations, not least through the IndiaAI Mission — a flagship programme under MeitY designed to democratise access to AI infrastructure, including compute resources, curated datasets and AI models. Now, says mission CEO Abhishek Singh, the organisation is poised for its next big leap: adding 20,000 GPUs to the national AI compute pool, expanding the datasets platform AI Kosh, and ensuring startups and researchers have the affordable, scalable resources they need to build world-class AI solutions.
Having led the AI Impact Summit since its inception, what are your expectations and how will it contribute to the growth of Indian startups and the innovation ecosystem?
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We have received an excellent response, with strong participation from governments, industry leaders, private companies and academia worldwide. This creates a tremendous opportunity for Indian startups to showcase their capabilities not only in building impactful solutions but also in positioning India as a global hub for AI applications and services. India is well on its way to becoming a leading AI destination for the world, where innovative solutions are developed, deployed and delivered at scale globally.
The latest Economic Survey has pointed out that India is lagging in data curation and annotation startups, which are critical for building high-quality AI models. What concrete steps is the government taking to strengthen this segment of the AI ecosystem?
Under the India AI Mission, we have developed a national datasets platform called AI Kosh, which currently hosts over 7,000 datasets from both public and private sectors. These datasets are shared along with defined policies ensuring privacy, anonymization and security. They are accessible to researchers and startups developing AI models and applications. AI Kosh is being continuously strengthened and we expect the number of datasets to grow significantly. This forms the core of our strategy to ensure data availability.
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Does the IndiaAI Mission also closely examine the source and quality of datasets used by selected startups for training their models, especially given the government’s commitment to developing safe and hallucination-free AI systems?
Yes, we place strong emphasis on data curation and quality. We ensure that all personally identifiable information is carefully removed, datasets are thoroughly cleaned and complete and they are made easily accessible through secure APIs. Significant effort goes into validating, standardizing and maintaining these datasets so that startups can rely on them for building robust and responsible AI solutions.
High-performance GPUs are essential for AI development. In the next phase of the IndiaAI Mission, how will affordable and timely access to GPU infrastructure be ensured for startups and researchers amid global supply constraints and rising costs?
GPUs are essential for both training and inference in AI development. Currently, we have around 38,000 GPUs available across the ecosystem and we have recently completed the fourth round of empanelment to further strengthen this infrastructure. We also expect at least 20,000 additional GPUs to be onboarded in the near future, which will significantly enhance our capacity to support startups, researchers and innovators. This growing infrastructure will help ensure more reliable, scalable and affordable access to computing resources for building and deploying advanced AI solutions.
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In the next phase of the mission, which sectors will MeitY prioritize? While health and education are often highlighted, what about defense and space, which are crucial for India’s technological sovereignty?
All sectors are important and MeitY’s role is to provide enabling infrastructure such as GPUs, datasets, models and standardized protocols that every sector can leverage. Similar to how digital public infrastructure has benefited multiple domains, the India AI Mission is creating shared layers of compute, data and models. Sector-specific applications—whether in health, education, defense, manufacturing, or supply chains—will be developed and deployed by the respective departments based on this common foundation.
At the global level, how does the India AI Mission plan to support competitive startups while ensuring their solutions remain aligned with India’s local needs?
India currently ranks among the top three AI ecosystems globally, after the US and China. While there is still ground to cover, the government is providing robust support to accelerate growth. Ultimately, real progress will be driven by startups, industry and academia. We are actively supporting all three and I am confident they will develop world-class, production-ready AI solutions that can compete on the global stage.
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