Artificial Intelligence

AI will not create growth in isolation. It will first transform productivity, efficiency, and human capability and when those three align, revenue growth becomes inevitable and sustainable.

India’s AI trajectory was at risk of being shaped by external gatekeepers rather than domestic ambition. The 2025 rule placed India in the second tier for US chip exports, which meant Indian companies could access advanced AI chips only through export licenses and in restricted volumes. In practical terms, this would have limited India’s AI compute capacity to roughly fifty thousand GPUs nationwide.

High‑end chips for Indian AI initiatives would have required case‑by‑case US approval, slowing essential upgrades and increasing reliance on US policy decisions. The outcome would have been fewer GPUs, slower deployment cycles, and a significant constraint on the pace of India’s AI growth.

As AI scales across governance, OT, data platforms, and agentic systems, one fact stands out. Cyber resilience is now a collective responsibility and demands a full 360 degree view.

A few realities we cannot ignore:

• Threat actors have the same tools we do
  They move without guardrails or governance. Their speed is increasing. Our defenses must adjust just as fast
• AI in operational tech will be the hardest frontier
  IT environments are challenging enough, but energy grids, airports, and industrial systems were never built for AI driven autonomy. Securing them will take a very different playbook
• Businesses want more data. Cyber teams pay the price
  More data fuels better models, but it also expands exposure and complexity. 

For years, the easy answer to trust was to keep a human in the loop.

Agentic AI breaks that model. If the agent completes the loop, the human becomes irrelevant. If we force the human back in, the system loses the efficiency it promised.

That is the tension we must solve next. Not with slogans, but with real engineering, governance, and clarity on where autonomy is acceptable.

The Indian fintech sector has been a defining force in reshaping how financial services are accessed and consumed. Over the last decade, companies in fintech have solved critical issues in payments and lending, and financial inclusion.

However, the journey ahead demands a shift from addressing isolated challenges; it calls for building integrated value propositions that transcend silos. Embedded finance offers precisely this opportunity, enabling fintechs to weave financial services seamlessly into everyday user experiences, creating an enduring impact for the broader ecosystem. AI is increasingly becoming core to this movement, unlocking unprecedented potential to scale intelligence across operations.

India AI Mission has laid the right foundation - compute at scale, open datasets, language models, and responsible AI. Now, the focus should be to move decisively from pilots to production across ministries and states. An accelerated AI adoption should focus on time bound inter-ministerial adoption in priority sectors such as health, agriculture, justice, and skilling, along with last mile integration with Digital Public Infrastructure.

Initial resistance to AI gave way to recognition that investigations and forensics now operate on an AI-plus-human model. AI strengthens detection and analysis but human judgement defines accountability and strategy.

Training millions in AI and creating equitable access will be key to ensuring India remains competitive in the global digital economy. Even as India becomes one of the most consequential battlegrounds for AI investments globally, the success of billion-dollar commitments will hinge on the country’s ability to scale talent, build capabilities across sectors and ensure that the benefits of AI are broadly distributed.

India has made significant progress in reshaping its manufacturing landscape over the past decade, but deeper technological and ecosystem transformation is needed to compete with global leaders. While the top quartile of Indian manufacturers shows reasonable capability, a significant portion of companies are far below the desired digital maturity. Without widespread adoption of Industry 4.0, automation and AI-enabled systems, India risks losing competitiveness to countries that scaled digitalisation much earlier.

Continuous Control Monitoring (CCM) is helping companies change gears from reactice checks to proactive, data-driven oversight that flags risks as they emerge. CCM represents a fundamental shift in mindset where controls become living sensors embedded within business processes. These sensors continuously assess performance and risk in real time, making them part of the organisation’s operating rhythm.

Over the past few decades, the finance function has undergone a profound transformation, evolving from a custodian of numbers to a strategic partner that drives growth, insight, and innovation. Gone are the days when finance merely reported the past; today, it is shaping the future.

AI is no longer just a tool for efficiency. It has become the engine powering this transformation. Indian enterprises are embedding AI into their core financial strategies by unifying data across ERP and CRM systems, applying advanced analytics, and fostering a culture of digital fluency. CFOs are using AI and machine learning to move from reactive reporting to predictive and prescriptive insights, from manual processes to intelligent automation, and from a focus on cost control to one on value creation.

As adoption scales responsibly, finance leaders are unlocking new sources of enterprise value while redefining the role of finance as a driver of business resilience and inclusive growth. This transformation is helping position India as a trusted global hub for AI-led financial innovation and progress.

Generative AI brings immense promise, but trust will depend on going back to the basics. It starts with solving the right problems, using the right data, and understanding the risks that extend beyond security. True confidence in AI comes from human validation, cross‑functional collaboration, and compliance with emerging regulations. Building trusted AI is not a choice for tomorrow, it is a responsibility for today.

AI transformation is probably easier because there’s now a clear understanding of where it’s headed, how to leverage and extract value from agentic AI and, eventually, autonomous agents. The roadmap is visible. What creates challenges, however, is unpredictability, deciding whether to invest in one sector over another when tariffs, supply chains, and global conditions remain uncertain.

GenAI becomes a copilot, not an autopilot. In the context of HR, leaders and professionals should define the purpose and ethical boundaries of AI use (setting intent), critically assess AI-generated recommendations (validating outputs), and remain accountable for the final decisions and their impact on people and culture (owning outcomes).

India stands at the cusp of an AI revolution and telecom industry will be its catalyst. We are rapidly advancing towards 5G-advanced and 6G on a global scale. The work being done by our telecom community in engineering these breakthroughs is absolutely essential, putting the industry front and center in this transformative revolution.

In these transformative times, Bharat is witnessing a surge of digital-native consumers with rising expectations for personalisation and seamless brand experience. AI is enabling companies to meet these demands through unprecedented levels of hyper-personalisation and intelligent operations from sensing and forecasting to real-time optimisation.

As consumer interactions shift to vernacular, AI-driven conversations through virtual assistants and influencers will redefine engagement. To thrive, businesses must embrace a consumer-first mindset, strengthen data and analytics, foster agile AI integration, and prioritise collaboration over isolation; balancing speed with strategic focus.

The global economic paradigm is changing as companies are under tremendous pressure from people across the world to account for the social impact of their businesses. Moreover, endless growth with profit as the sole metric is no longer sustainable. The consequences of social and environmental imbalance are mostly seen in the long term. If allowed to go unchecked, the disruption caused may cause a significant dip in growth and corporate valuations.

India’s tech ecosystem is uniquely positioned to leapfrog into the intelligent enterprise era, with 81% of technology firms planning to systematically integrate AI into their products and services within the next 12 months. The strategic integration of AI can redefine our global competitiveness, as 63% of enterprises are set to increase AI spending by more than 10% in the coming year.

However, realising AI’s full value requires a concerted effort - underscoring the importance of robust governance frameworks, talent development, and embedding AI into core business operations. Organisations that proactively embrace these imperatives will not only drive innovation but also set new benchmarks in delivering value and efficiency..