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India can emerge as a global AI leader without matching the US or China’s massive spending on frontier models and chips. Instead, India’s advantage lies in an application-first strategy: leveraging its vast AI talent pool, open-source innovation, Indic-language models, and Digital Public Infrastructure such as Aadhaar, UPI, and ONDC. Sovereign AI, Bhashini, and indigenous models can help address linguistic and data-sovereignty challenges. The IndiaAI Mission further democratizes compute and startup capital, positioning India to build affordable, multilingual, and inclusive AI at population scale.
