An entrepreneur and investor, Anupam Mittal has also expressed an opinion on India’s AI strategy and why the country doesn’t need to compete against the world to build large AI foundation models. He believes India’s biggest opportunity is to build AI-powered enterprise products and services to solve business problems in real-world situations.
Mittal's comments come at a time when countries and technology companies around the world are investing billions of dollars in developing advanced LLMs and foundation models to power generative AI applications. Companies like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta, and xAI have made huge investments in foundational AI research, and there is a global competition to develop more and more capable AI systems.
Mittal suggests that India should adopt a pragmatic approach by focusing on areas where it generates the most value rather than trying to replicate the capital-intensive efforts of global technology giants. Building cutting-edge foundation models requires enormous investments in computing infrastructure, specialised AI chips, massive datasets, and world-class research teams, all of which are concentrated among a relatively small number of companies worldwide.
Instead of being in this expensive race, Mittal thinks Indian entrepreneurs should take advantage of existing AI models to create new and different applications for businesses and consumers. By developing enterprise software, automation platforms, specific AI tools and intelligent services, Indian businesses can create globally competitive products while dealing with the practical problems that every organisation has to face in their business.
India has for many years been considered a global leader in software development, information technology services and digital innovation. The country has a huge talent pool of engineers, a startup ecosystem and a strong software product development experience to be able to leverage the application layer of AI. And many experts believe that the big economic value will be created by the companies that build the foundation model, but also the companies that build software applications that implement AI into our daily work.
Enterprise AI is one of the fastest-growing segments of the global technology market. Businesses in banking, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, logistics, education, and customer support are turning to AI to enhance efficiency, automate repetitive tasks, improve decision-making, and provide better customer experience.
For Indian startups, this is an opportunity to design specialized AI solutions for domestic and international markets. From AI-powered customer service platforms and financial analytics tools to healthcare diagnostics, legal technology, cybersecurity solutions, and supply chain optimisation, the range of potential applications continues to expand rapidly.
Mittal’s comments also fit into a broader trend in the global AI ecosystem: most successful companies build applications on top of existing foundation models rather than building their own from scratch. This approach greatly reduces development costs and allows startups to concentrate on product innovation, user experience and domain expertise.
India's rapidly growing digital economy is also an excellent opportunity. Government initiatives on digital infrastructure, internet penetration, widespread adoption of cloud computing, and a thriving startup community make AI-driven innovation even more attractive. Digital transformation is of higher importance to businesses, and as a result, we expect AI-powered enterprise applications (such as Cloud Computing) to become even more critical.
Experts also stress that although application development is a vital area for India, we should continue to invest in AI research, talent development, semiconductor and computing infrastructure. Increasing these pillars will help us grow with AI technology, and the country will be able to keep pace with the fast pace of innovation as AI technologies mature.
Mittal’s comments bring to light another major strategic challenge for India’s technology sector: whether success in AI should come from a leader’s leadership in building foundation models or from creating practical, scalable solutions that create economic value. His take is that India can become a global AI leader by focusing on innovation at the application level where its skills in software engineering, entrepreneurship and enterprise solutions can give it a huge edge.
As AI transforms the world economy, the debate over where India should invest its resources will continue to exist. And if we are to look at AI-enabled technologies and products that will be the foundation of the country’s future in AI innovation, the country’s growing technology ecosystem will be an increasingly important part of the process.
