By Nikhil Dedha, New Delhi, February 13
The upcoming India AI Impact Summit will highlight how India is deploying artificial intelligence at a scale and depth "not there anywhere else in the world," according to Shekar Sivasubramanian, Head at Wadhwani AI, who said the country is moving beyond pilot projects to real-world transformation across sectors.
In an exclusive conversation with ANI and talking about the summit, Sivasubramanian said, "The summit forms one continual ongoing communication and conveyance mechanism to demonstrate how India is tackling and addressing the usage of responsible, ethical, appropriate AI for all of India, not just the urbanized setup, not just in terms of pilot applications, but actually changing the lives of the people in India. So that's not done at the scale at which India can do. It's not there anywhere else in the world."
The India AI Impact Summit, scheduled to be held from February 16 to 20, 2026, at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, is the first global AI summit to be hosted in the Global South.
Announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the summit aims to translate AI vision into real-world impact for the public good and inclusion.
According to Sivasubramanian, the summit is meant to showcase India's work in artificial intelligence across commercial industries as well as in the social sector.
On impact, Sivasubramanian stressed that India has already moved beyond pilot stages. Referring to healthcare, he said AI solutions are being integrated with national platforms such as NIKSHAY to support the National TB Elimination Programme and the goal of TB-Mukt Bharat. These efforts, he said, are already reducing morbidity and mortality and improving disease care across multiple states.
Similarly, in agriculture, AI is being used to analyse food grain quality and detect pest prevalence in crops. "All these are implemented and scaling solutions," he said.
He noted that Wadhwani AI works closely with the Government of India and state governments, particularly in areas such as healthcare and agriculture.
He said the Government of India "can and should take a lot of credit for the work that they've been doing in AI for the past seven years," highlighting the establishment of digital infrastructure and pipelines and the integration of AI into policy and procedures for large-scale implementation across states.
India's democratic setup and multilingual environment, he said, provide a unique backdrop for deploying AI solutions in a context-relevant manner.
"So India has the largest footprint, the social footprint, in a democratic setup where you can actually roll out in multiple languages in a context-relevant manner, AI," he said, adding that this gives India the ability to showcase leadership in handling AI in a complex environment.
He added that the summit will facilitate knowledge exchange with global leaders while allowing other countries to understand India's approach.
"So in a sense, what we have done in our country can be made available to the entire world. So we expect to do a thing, something we will learn and something we will give, and knowing India, we will tend to give a lot more than what we will take," Sivasubramanian said.
On challenges in scaling AI from pilots to nationwide rollouts, Sivasubramanian said the issue lies more with implementing organisations than with the ecosystem. He said large-scale implementation requires expertise, perseverance and what he termed "patient capital."
He added that India's AI journey will continue steadily, focusing on policy integration, multilingual delivery, training and last-mile access.
"Like this, there are literally thousands of opportunities present across India where you can make things slowly, systematically, piece by piece, better for the country. So that's our mission and that's just a journey and so that does not change" said Sivasubramanian.
- ANI
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