India Is Becoming an Architect of the Global AI Order | Ivana Bartoletti of Wipro

The Global AI Summit just happened in New Delhi, and the message from India was clear: this country is no longer just writing code for the rest of the world. It's becoming an architect of the global AI order. Ivana Bartoletti, Chief Privacy and AI Governance Officer at Wipro and Council of Europe advisor, joins Craig Smith to unpack what that shift actually means. Her frame is the sharpest line of the episode: Europe writes the rules, the US writes the checks, and India is writing the code, in 22 languages. But she's careful to add that the AI race isn't just a technical one. It's about institutional capacity, the ability to absorb AI capability and drive it into real applications that serve real people at scale. The conversation ranges across the full landscape of AI's global moment: why companies that announced 100% AI replacement in customer service quietly had to rehire the humans they let go; why the popular narrative of "Europe regulates, America innovates" is a myth that doesn't survive contact with California's actual AI rules; and why India's strategic choice may prove to be the most durable positioning in a field where trust is becoming the scarcest resource. Bartoletti speaks from a genuinely rare vantage point: a European executive, sitting in Germany, working for an Indian company, advising the Council of Europe, watching the geopolitical AI order reorganize itself in real time. Subscribe to Eye on A. I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Craig S. Smith?

  Where India is in the AI journey, they became kind of the IT services center for the world. They have tremendous human resources. It looks to me like they were so successful at that. They didn't transition to AI until fairly late in the game.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  India is no longer just a consumer or a talent exporter in artificial intelligence. So it's to an extent becoming an architect of the global AI order. India is an AI power.

• 0:31Craig S. Smith?

  India also has that ambition. And frankly, it makes more sense to me that India sort of lead on the global south.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  The European Union wrote the rules, the US wrote the checks and India is writing the code. And he's writing the code in 22 languages, right?

• 0:49Craig S. Smith?

  Let's start with your introduction and then we'll talk about what you guys are doing in India and how India is shaping up in the AI world.

• 1:02Speaker 02

  Ivana Bhattacharya and I'm the Vice President and Chief Privacy and AI Governance Officer for WePro.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  And also I advise the Council of Europe on artificial intelligence and human rights, particularly gender. And I've authored a couple of books, one on sort of the politics and geopolitics of AI. And another one, sort of the use of AI in financial services. And I was before at Oxford University and Oxford Internet Institute as a fellow. And then at Virginia Tech on privacy and cybersecurity machine learning. So it's sort of profiled at the intersection between business, academia and sort of international institutions.

• 1:53Craig S. Smith?

  And how long have you been with WePro?

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Four years now, four years, even more than four years. Gosh, time flies, honestly.

• 2:02Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, so you were at this summit in India, the AI summit. I'd like first to hear your view of where India is in the AI journey. And then we'll talk about the broader issues.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, yeah, so the AI summit was held uh three weeks ago in New Delhi. It was an interesting summit that speaks to an ex- sort of what you're asking also speaks to where India is at at the moment. So I have been to previous summits and of course, you know, these are summits, so it's not like uh um but um it was interesting because it was the most open summit I'd been to. Compared to Bletchley Park or Paris, yeah. Um, the topic went from Paris, which was Action Summit, to Impact Summit. So the topic of the summit in India was the impact of AI

• 3:09Speaker 02

  on business, um wellbeing, society and inclusion. Um, and um, and it was open in the sense that literally people could come in, register and come in. And of course, there was sort of head of states and and AI ministers from across the world, but it was interesting because it was open and there was sort of a lot of young people coming in um to to listen. And it speaks to me to the to the to where is India as at the is at the moment because um India is no longer a just a consumer or a talent exporter in a traditional intelligence. So it's it's to an extent becoming

• 3:49Speaker 02

  an architect of the uh global AI order. And I think the summit was about saying and demonstrating that. It was about saying um India is an AI power. Uh, it does AI in a different way from uh other superpowers, the US or China, to an extent the EU. Um, and um, and it the focus India was gave at the summit was on responsible AI, on inclusion, uh Prime Minister Modi. Uh, not just at the summit, but previously said in a meeting with tech leaders said, you know, there's no compromise on ethical AI.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  And for India, this is important because obviously when India talks inclusion. It doesn't just talk about the nice thing to do, but inclusion is also about bringing the people along in a country that historically has wider economic divide. Um. So it's interesting. The question is not, you know, whether India will or won't be a major AI power is is sort of how India. Plans to define this. And I think the summit spoke to that in the sense that. Mo Prime Minister Modi was was quite clear in that, you know, come to India, this is a good place to do innovation.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  So do in India, scale up in India and then bring it to the rest of the world. So it's a definition of a unique and different way in the global. Uh. So AI landscape to to really um come in with the with the uniqueness of sort of the India landscape. So that was really interesting, I have to say.

• 5:29Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, and you know, I was in uh Saudi Arabia for a conference last year, I guess. Uh. And there was a lot of talk, they're pouring money into AI, as everybody knows. Uh. But there was a lot of talk of them as being uh the the leader of the global south. That was kind of their aspiration, but. Uh. India also has that ambition. Uh. And frankly, it makes more sense to me that India uh sort of lead on the global south. Uh. Although they don't have the financial resources that that the Arab states do.

• 6:11Craig S. Smith?

  Uh. It is. Was there any discussion about that?

• 6:16Speaker 02

  No, it's really interesting what you say, because I have also been very involved in Saudi Arabia. Um. In the last few years and and really see the sort of the the um the big investments, you know, in uh in uh. Um. In AI and um and it's been an interesting, very interesting um journey to watch. Um. Of course, the very different realities. I mean, India is a country with unique strengths. Uh. In the sense that it's a country with one for. Billion people um is a country where uh that exports twenty percent of global data produces, sorry. Uh twenty percent of global data where seven hundred um uh hundred thousand um sorry, million people.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Have a a mobile phone and therefore, you know, that produce produce data and and consume data is a country where. There is a massive appetite for innovation, where sixty percent of the population is young. Uh it's a country that produces enormous amount of talent, English speaking talent. Um is a country where in technical education and where there is a fierce competition to to get into. Good education, especially on the on the uh uh technical side um. So I mean, these are unique points of India. In addition to that, um what really strikes in India is the ability to.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Scale up large digital public infrastructure. I mean, I am always pleased by from the ADA to the. Uh to um U P I and sort of the uh the. Unified payment uh across the country, how they've been able to to do something like this and to scale it up to so many people across the country. Um so obviously now for India, this the the the um the strategy is. How do we bring A I everywhere? So not just in the tier one and two tier two cities. But how do we bring into the more sort of rural areas? Um the questions are, yes, of course about models, but about applications that can be really really.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Used and developed by the people in India and then serve the world. Uh the questions are about, obviously, infrastructure, you know, A I is far more than than just applications and models. It's very much about earth infrastructure. So we have also seen during the summit loads of announcements about um infrastructure and cables and and data centers and and chips and all of that. So it's a it's it's an interesting country that is mixing also the the sort of the need for Southern AI, Southern in the sense we want um uh systems, the speaker languages, the speaker values and culture, um and at the same time bringing in investments coming from sort of

• 9:13Speaker 02

  the large, the large corporations. So it's different from what is happening in Saudi Arabia. And obviously, you know, it's a there is a strong relationship in the sense that a lot of Indians do and and work in Saudi and but they are very different sort of landscape from a technological standpoint. And it was the first summit happened in the Global South. That's really interesting, the first one.

• 9:34Craig S. Smith?

  Oh, that's great.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  And that more been underestimated because all the other summits, they were held in in in sort of the in Britain, by the UK, in France, in South Korea. But this was the first one held in the Global South. And and the the fact that New Delhi, it was interesting, walking and or driving and across New Delhi, there was a few days, you know, there was AI written everywhere. And of course, that was um there was a sign that they wanna they really wanna be part in in in in that journey. And obviously, you know, it's um positioning is is going to be very important moving forward. And the summit happened after two important deals, happened after the deal with

• 10:17Speaker 02

  the US and happened after the deal with the EU with the sort of on the line um going to to uh to India Gate and joining for the parade with with with Prime Minister Modi. So it happened at at an important time in terms of India positioning globally.

• 10:36Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, uh from what I understood uh when I was there, uh and there were there were a couple of things. One uh. They do have this data center build out program. But they are still very far behind their.

• 10:57Craig S. Smith?

  The rest of the world, I mean, the rest of the major AI players in the. In the capacity of their of their data centers for. For scaling AI. But there were some some deals mentioned or announced. Can you talk about the infrastructure? How the timeline or how how important that is for them to reach their goals?

• 11:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's interesting because so they have. The investment to the money, the support is coming to sides. So it's coming from some government side and it's coming from private and international side. From government side, what we've seen over recent months has been sort of the AI. India AI mission, which is really something big in India at the moment. Which is spans compute capacity. Training AI innovation startups. Data set platforms and loads of other things and and financing and and also working on future skills. So that is and with a big investment on safer trusted AI. I mean, there is a lot of push for.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  I mean, it's the first time actually that I'm seeing such a big push, for example, on privacy enhancing technologies. And partnership with academia and say you've got to invest in research in privacy enhancing tech, which, you know, spelling it out so clearly. So this is one thing. So that's from government side. And and also after the summit, there have been announcements from government in towards increasing. The sort of GPU infrastructure. And and the numbers they're talking, they've got it written somewhere, but it's. Reaches to the forty thousand units. That was announced by government. From private international side, we have seen a lot of announcements from Microsoft saying, you know, massive investment.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Seventeen billion investment in in in cloud, India's cloud and the AI infrastructure. So they describe it as the largest investment in India. And that builds on a previous big commitment that they had done, the Microsoft had done in India. And then and lots of other investments coming in in infrastructure from from from private companies. So I think in international private companies, but I think the government is very much aware. You know that they have to to scale up. And I think this is was also the the purpose of the summit to attract a lot of international company to to push.

• 13:39Craig S. Smith?

  We Pro, am I pronouncing that right always?

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Correct, correct.

• 13:42Craig S. Smith?

  Can you talk because a part of this would happen in India is. They became kind of the IT services center for the world. And they have, you know, tremendous human resources, obviously. In a way, it it looks to me like they were so successful at that. That they didn't transition to AI until fairly late in the game. Can you talk about what We Pro does there? What what your role has been and how you see the landscape changing?

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Well, you ask a very good question when you say, did the companies in India in India adapt fast enough? I mean, that's a really interesting point because basically what you say is, look, you know, for many, many years. These companies, they've been the back office operations now for the rest of the world. And now with AI, I I actually think that these large companies. And We Pro is one of the largest in India, two hundred and forty thousand people. Working on digital transformation on on sort of across sectors from finance to manufacturing to. To sort of banking, healthcare. I think there was a clear understanding.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  And quite early on, um, because these are international companies. I mean, we've priced got office everywhere, very strong in the U. And the very strong US presence, but everywhere across the world. Um, that AI was going rapid to to rapidly, especially after generative AI made that splash and went from, yes, there is, there are a few engineers that can work on AI to everybody can work on AI. Um, they realized, so we all realized very quickly, look, you know, we have to to experiment and we have to adopt and adopt a scale and fast. I think companies like mine, they really understood that it was, as for any other company around the world,

• 15:51Speaker 02

  because of the impact that generative AI was having and the fact that was reaching everybody. They were also quite well positioned in sort of taking that balanced approach between how much do we let people experiment versus how much do we remain risk adverse? And um, uh, because, especially because when AI, when generative AI came out, there's a lot of horrible stories now about things getting leaked everywhere and, you know, people putting confidential data from clients and things like that. So two elements here. The first is these companies have not just done back office operations. I mean, these are companies that have been doing

• 16:35Speaker 02

  deep innovation with large clients globally. Uh, yeah. So there's been more exposure than than than one from an external standpoint could have thought. And the second is that they were very well placed because of the huge amount of talent that they had. They were very well placed to turn the experimentation into use cases. So, for example, what we did at Wipro, and I think that we said, we've got to train everybody to, I mean, the first, the first thing that we said, we're going to train everybody. So we're gonna let people experiment in within safe constraints, but we are going to train everybody in what is this, this coming up, what is generative AI, how to use it, how to use it responsibly. Um,

• 17:20Speaker 02

  and also, we cut to an extent crowdsources, crowdsourced.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Use cases because we basically said there is nobody better than our employees that who knows where to innovate. And in this, Greg, the India culture really helped because this is a culture that is not adverse to technology. It's used to use technology every single day in every facet of their life. So when we said, well, actually, you know, tell us which are the use cases where you would actually make your life easier at work, we had a proliferation of use cases. And this is where I think the India advantage is, you know, so yes, in the past, companies probably were like that.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  But actually, what I've seen in Whopper is when you unleash this stuff, people were so hungry for innovation. They're not, you know, of course, everybody is like looking at the future and jobs and things, but they are the first ones to say, I can make my work better. It's a cultural thing. And and this is a competitive edge, you know, this is competitive advantage. That I I see in the way that that my company operates and the way that my coworkers, the way my teams, the way the people, the sort of um company of that size, you know, the way that they embrace and push and push for for innovation. So. And and then sometimes you know, you've got this, you have this tension, right, between

• 18:48Speaker 02

  sort of how fast do you go and how many constraints gut rails you put in place and that's, you know, and that's why you say, okay. But it's also a good thing because then you encourage them to say, okay, let's find less, you know, privacy enhancing ways or legal protection by design. So it's it's a good dynamic. Um, and I think it's um it's quite healthy. So, yeah, on this, um, it's quite, it's been quite an interesting journey so far.

• 19:15Craig S. Smith?

  In the midst of this digital transformation uh in in India is the massive I T uh services, the the business process operations.

• 19:29Craig S. Smith?

  Uh, or is that shifting uh in any way or because the other thing that's happening is um, you know, AI is one of the first places that's being applied is in uh, call centers and and you know, there was, I've talked a lot of these companies, oh, you know, it doesn't mean that we're gonna uh, reduce headcount in the hot call centers, it'll make them more efficient, but I I frankly question that because uh, it's it seems that that uh, you know, with AI voice and all that

• 20:08Craig S. Smith?

  uh, technology, you're gonna need fewer people sitting in call centers. But yeah, how is the uh, how is all of this affecting the existing industry? How is it affecting WePro?

• 20:21Speaker 02

  I think there's a lot of um glamour in the media, yeah, when you talk about AI, you know, and I think we've got to be realistic. I think AI is changing a lot of things and especially when it comes to um, sort of efficiency gains and and and a lot of these things, but I but I also think that um, there are things that are that are very important. So for example, client centricity and you know, having a custom sort of a very sort of um, and I don't think that AI is going to replace that. So uh, I think you say that you it's true. I mean, you I mean, you said, you know, when you talk to these companies and they say we're not gonna cut

• 21:03Speaker 02

  costs, but we're going to augment or we're going to make I think part of it is not really a lie. I mean, it's true in the sense that it's it's not like this huge change happening and and uh, that sometimes it's very useful for some people to portray in the media that, you know, AI is coming, is replacing everything and we're going heading to disaster and, you know, everybody's gonna be jobless and stuff like that. I don't know what you think, but. I think this quite dramatic narrative is not really mirroring realities it is. And we see this from this, we see companies that have said, we're gonna, we're going to go

• 21:47Speaker 02

  one hundred percent, you know, AI in cost centers or, you know, in customer services and then having to retract. But not because AI doesn't work, it's because AI works alongside humans. It's not, you know, they're two different sets of skills and intelligence. And I think a lot of this, we always have to dissect, you know, and say, okay, this announcement, what does that really mean actually? And then a few days later, you read, you read the story and you say, well, actually, they've, they've had to rehire the humans because, because they were not able to do the job. But it's normal because it's different, different skills. So obviously, things are changing, right? So in, we are infusing AI in everything that we do, right? So everything that we do, we are infusing AI.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Now with Agentic AI, we, you know, what it's, but that doesn't, this doesn't mean that suddenly humans disappear. You know, it means that we are also reshaping the way that we do things. Because, because AI brings benefits clearly. And, but also adds new complexities and a new layer of humanity, if you want, like. Yeah. And I don't think it's so like, so black and white or so. So I think there will be, obviously, there will be changes, right? There will be changes in the way the things that, that, that, you know, when you, you know, where we locate humans and where we locate machines.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  But there are things like, you know, a human, a customer centric approach, the centricity of the sort of client relationship that, that cannot be automated. So, um, yeah, so I think it's, it's, it's very much of work in progress here.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  And I don't think it's so, we are in a situation where we can say things are like this or like that. Because we are evolving and I mean, AGENTIC AI obviously brings a lot of new exciting sort of challenges. And but even that, even that, you know, um, it's not so rapid as people think, you know, people, companies are started with less problematic areas of automation. There's still a lot of governance issues that they they become very relevant because it's not about being nice and good, it's also about survival and being able to innovate in the long term. So it's, it's, I think what keeps it, or a lot of this is, is in progress.

• 24:11Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, I mean, one of the things I wondered is whether a lot of these companies like WePro oh, would, would shift into AI consulting or AI

• 24:29Craig S. Smith?

  engineering or, you know, to help, uh, there's a lot of, uh, companies in the West that want to implement AI but don't really have the skills India has, this tremendous uh, workforce, uh, skilled workforce. Do you see that happening at all?

• 24:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I see this happening, I'd say more, I say that it's and it's probably where sort of the positioning of Prime Minister Modi at the summit comes in, right? Because what Modi said was, Prime Minister said, it's really interesting. What he basically said is we're going to be leaders, but hear me out, in responsible, trustworthy AI. The reason why he's saying this is because he's adding to the India, yes, we have a huge amount of, of people who are trained and engineers. We are, we are the talent hub in the world, yeah? You can, but we also do things in the Way.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  So the positioning is like, you know, India is the conscience of the world when it comes to A I. And obviously, nobody, I mean, we're not born yesterday, no, we, we, nobody does things because is it, it, it is just out of, of, you know, idealism. People do things also because, especially a prime minister, because they wanna push the country. And to me, it's important because what he's basically saying is we do things in the right way. And you can trust us, we have a safe, trusted partner to innovate with. So he's not just saying we've got the talent.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  He's also saying, especially in this shifting geopolitical landscape, we can be a safe, trusted partner to work with. And obviously, countries around the world, they lack this talent. They do. I mean, I live in Europe, I live in Germany, you know, the, eh, eh, the, um, Germany, the leader in, in manufacturing, in cars, until, you know, it was. But it's also a country that is going through com- quite a complex economical situation at the moment, as a lot of. And in Europe at the moment, for example, there is a big push for Southern A I for many different reasons. So I think what India is saying is we do things, we can be a safe partner, we can build innovation the last.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  And innovation that is sustainable. So the, the, it's not just a matter of numbers, it's not just a matter of, yes, we provide you the workforce. Is whatever you come and develop in India and you take and you use is also safe, trustworthy and reliable. And this is also rooted in, in values. And I think, so this is also related to what we were saying, you know, earlier in terms of where is India positioning. We Pro is, I mean, to me, this is part of the core of my work, you know, core of my work is I wanna make sure that whatever we do, however I work with clients, when we in, when I am with the, where we innovate with them or in enterprise A I that we produce, create,

• 27:39Speaker 02

  the software that we create, I wanna make sure that. We do it in a way that has privacy, security and legal protection resilience into the design of what we're doing. And I feel strong in this because I'm part of an Indian company that is making a big push on this. Um, and obviously, yes, you say consulting, yes, I mean, we are consulting that in the sense that what you say, you know, we can, you talk to to organizations that don't know how to go from a proof of concept to deployment to scale. And they don't know how to do that. They don't have the necessarily the talent to do this.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  And um, and they don't sometimes know that, you know, how to bring that proof of concept, how to evaluate it, how to make sure it's the right one, how to cut through the glamour and the media announcements and how to do something that really brings long-term value. And that is the problem often, not that a lot of companies have. And we see the reports in the newspapers, you know, when you see, you know, is AI bringing um return for investment? But it depends, you know, it depends on whether one is innovating for the sake of it or if an organization is really innovating because they want to bring low-term value and they've identified the right tools to do that.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  So I mean, yeah, so I think this is, this is the positioning of of India and therefore also um strengthened the position of my company.

• 29:13Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, uh, and and and uh, what what another thing I've uh, I've found interesting is India is not, from what I understood, not really looking at horizontal AI. They're not building a national L L M. They're more focused on on vertical applications. And is that reflected in in We Pro's approach?

• 29:40Speaker 02

  There is a big push, I think, for real use cases and applications. So it's not just about the models. Um, yes, of course, you know, it it is about models and and um.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Uh, small language, smaller language models that reflect the language, for example, the variety of of languages and spoken in India. Um, that reflects sort of the the sort of cultural background of the country. But it's more about, it's also about applications and real use cases, real applications, the support and help Indian in everyday life. And I think this is also what we're saying earlier, you know, this is where a lot of the strength is because if you, if you think, you know, the ability that they have to scale up. And this is reflecting in, I think, the appetite that a company and and

• 30:39Speaker 02

  sort of all the teams across Weeper, for example, they have for say, yes, okay, let's, you know, let's take this license and experiment and see, you know, what is a good use case. I mean, we are client zero from everything that we do. Which the reason for this is because there is a big appetite to to try out things and to understand what are the use cases, how can we, is it worth scaling up, right? And then at that point, just is it really worth scaling up, but we try in-house first. So I think it's, it's, it is reflecting also in the mentality of of a lot of the leadership and wider leadership in in companies as well.

• 31:18Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, uh, I'm not sure that you're in a position to answer this, but I wondered, you know, you have this uh, this workforce in the business processes. Outsourcing, I guess the O is outsourcing industry. Are the skill sets there uh, adequate? Because a- another thing I I saw in India was there's, there's tremendous pressure because the.

• 31:51Craig S. Smith?

  The openings in the elite, you know, the IIT Indian Institute of Technologies network is so small and you've got this tremendous

• 32:06Craig S. Smith?

  yeah

• 32:08Craig S. Smith?

  number of of young people that want to get into those institutions. And I think less than 20% succeed. So you've got this spillover that then goes in the secondary institutions or not, but the workforce that WePro has assembled. Do you have to go? You you talked about training. Can you do it through training to to bring these people up to speed? Do you is there? Do you need to to source a new talent that's more AI focused?

• 32:49Craig S. Smith?

  Because it's not only WePro, I imagine it's the entire

• 32:54Craig S. Smith?

  services industry, IT services industry.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a, I mean, I can't speak for the whole country, obviously, but what I can say is what I've seen and I witnessed and it's yours is a very, it's a good question. So basically, the question is do because of competition in getting to this top tier universities, right? Do are we really dealing with a workforce that has deep engineering skills and DPI skills? You know, compared to, for example, what a worker in Microsoft would do, right? And I think I think that is that that's the key question that India is also asking itself. I mean, the big investment in skills comes from that. The huge investment is investment in skills.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  And companies play their part. So one things that I can speak for mine, I don't can't speak for the others. But one things that we do, we have a huge sort of investment in skills, looking at, we have a skills council. Where we look at what is in the market, sort of what are the needs of the market? And also looking strategically, what's about to come and where do we need to skill people? Um. So it's it's obvious, you know, that is a that is um um. There is a responsibility that you as a company you need to have because you need to understand. You understand where you need to upskill, where you need to acquire, when you need to get people into courses and training, where you need to set up your own.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  And look, I mean, I also feel that a lot of this stuff, there is still somehow. I mean, I can see my own field of work, right, which is around sort of security and privacy and and in design. You don't have the places to learn yet. Because if I look at a G N T K I, right? And I have to say, talk about, you know, to implement, this is my job. And I have to look into how to implement security and privacy and human oversight in a G N T K I. Where do I learn it from? Okay, I have to, I I I I I've been teaching university.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  But by the time I was teaching this year, the time I was teaching university was a few years ago, there wasn't there yet. Right? So I have to use what I know and apply to it to to this, gather all the expertise, gather, you know, and and then cascade to the rest of the organization and say, this is where where we introduce how we design, for example, a G N T K I. Now my focus, for example, is is on uh sort of humility of a G N T K I, I just think that in my mind, where a G N T K I in order, you know, they need to show when where they don't know, it's a design issue that I've got in mind that I'm trying to work out. But, you know, it's, and we work with another partner, a company that we've acquired, and a paper company is called Design It.

• 35:53Speaker 02

  So there's a lot of legal design that I'm working on um to empower individuals in a way that is effective and meaningful, not tick the box exercise. But a lot of this is learning by doing, right? So that's the thing, right? Because a lot of this stuff, we are.

• 36:11Speaker 02

  Things go so fast. So it's about acquiring skills. It's about training skills. It's about letting people experiment themselves. It's about getting licensed to do stuff and let people play with them. And it's a combination of things. And of course, this is a sort of a company level. A country level, you know, what India is doing is, is, I think is understandable. You know, they're pushing massively on, on skills and they're pushing massively on tasking universities and public private partnerships to say, hey, you have to innovate in this specific skills. So it's, yeah, I think it's a complex problem now just for India.

• 36:51Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, uh, the, uh, what's your, your sense that, uh, I mean, cause certainly there's no denying that India is starting late on this. Uh, is, is, do you think that, uh, they have the, uh, the plan in place to become, uh, and I, a serious AI player as a nation? Uh, or, or is it really going to be a shift in, in, uh, the services industry that, that, that brings AI into the global economy as an AI player? I mean, is it because, you know, they have to do a,

• 37:36Craig S. Smith?

  uh, data center build out, they need to attract a lot of their, uh, best talent that's gone to the West, uh, back to India. That's, that's frankly what China did, uh, early on and, and it served them very well. Uh, but China also poured tremendous resources into the infrastructure. Do you think that this is going to work?

• 38:05Speaker 02

  You're asking a million dollar question. I mean, you're asking to predict the future, not just for India, for the rest of the world. I mean, in the sense that, you know, India has democratic legitimacy.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  Linguistic scale, diaspora. I mean, I don't think the aim is trying to out compute the US or China. I think it's building a trusted AI for one point four billion, one point four billion people and the global south and be a trusted partner for companies and countries worldwide.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  And I think, you know, we always picture the world as a race between the US and China. So, you know, I think it's sometimes, I mean, when I was in India, one day at the summit, I was thinking, when I saw all these young people, they're coding, I was like, gosh, I mean, the European Union, and I'm European, wrote the rules. The US wrote the checks and, and, and India is writing the code and he's writing the code in twenty two languages, right? So I'm, I'm thinking, I, I thought, you know, I think, I think the race of AI, if you call it like, we call it like that, is, is not just a technical one. It's not about, just about capability.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  And it's about many other things. It's, it's really about institutional capacity to absorb the capability and to drive it. So I think we're, you know, on that, we still have to see what happens in the future.

• 39:42Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah. And when you talk about India being a partner on trusted AI, what does that mean exactly? I mean.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, in first of all, it means that they have a clear focus on that, right? So I'll give you an example just today. I got a message from one of the other execs, basically say, yes, you know, in Kanakata, which is the Bangalore state, and the, the local government has just set up a responsible AI commission.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  Privacy fairness and and so there is a big push for that. And um so in that cup, you know, is very strong. I mean, the big investment that they're making, for example, in skills around privacy enhancing technologies and all of that is meaningful. You know, you see that this happening. So that's one thing. The second thing is that you have Europe, which is very much by, you know, at least the public perception now, I don't want to get started on on on this because I've been sort of in very involved in in European legislation.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  But, you know, at least the public perception um is Europe does a lot of regulation and um.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  The US, they do a lot of, you guys do a lot of um venture capital, innovation and blah, blah. But at the same time, regulation in many other different ways, you know, whether it's through sanctions or whether it's through states regulating quite toughly. I mean, I was really, I mean, I'm I'm dealing with AI new man resources. And when I see California regulation is very tough, very strict, you know, even facilitate. And AI decisions is something that is considered serious enough to be really governed. So, I mean, it's not that there isn't, there's a lot of myths, you know, the US doesn't regulate, Europe regulates, and a lot of this not really. Doesn't really reflect what really happens.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  And then you've got China, which is a different kind of very strong regulation, but very strong, you're sort of centralized and government and. India's taking a different approach. India says, we're not going to bring in new regulation at the moment, but we're going to leverage what we've got. You know, we have India's a country that has a federal, a nationwide privacy legislation, very strong cybersecurity requirements. And what they're saying is we are adopting what we call a um a uh techno legal approach, which basically means that we need technology to implement sort of legislation and legislative measures and security and protection into AI in a full accountable AI lifecycle.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  And they're basically, uh and then we're going to have a lot of softer legislation. And soft around this, you know, so we're not going to have an AI big law also because in India legislating takes a lot of time. Um, and um, so I think so they wanna be flexible, they wanna be, but they want to be. Um, so what they're this basically telling the world is you can innovate. We're not going to wrap any strong bureaucracy around it like other jurisdictions. But we we are doing it in a way that it's safe because we've really put a lot of attention. And not just attention, but a lot of technology, technology and controls around.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Um, all what makes AI trusted and and reliable. So this is the narrative, I think this is where and how they're playing it.

• 43:18Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, um, and as a trusted partner, one thing. Uh, that that uh, I that in there is this move towards sovereign AI. On the part of many countries uh, who don't want, I mean, AI embeds. Uh, the culture and norms of the people that that uh. Were actually the data that that trains the underlying models. And China's been very uh, upfront about. Uh, training its models and putting in guardrails that uh.

• 44:00Craig S. Smith?

  That adhere to Chinese, uh, the old phrase, the US is. Uh, got a very different cultural and values proposition in their AI. Uh, so i- i- is India is when you say trusted partner, is it that? Uh, you don't have to choose between these two. Um, you know, cultural and and uh ideological. Uh, ecosystems that you can uh build with India.

• 44:38Craig S. Smith?

  Uh, something that's uh, more independent or more tailored to whatever the cultural or. Uh, political uh, environment you're you're coming from.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there is an element of that, I would say. I would say the sovereignty is very much of an abused word, like in the sense that there are so many different kinds of sovereignty, like, and, you know, um, there is the tech, the data sovereignty, there is the, um, certainly, I would say, that,

• 45:22Speaker 02

  and that matters also because, for example, the summit we spoke about was the first one in the Global South, right? Certainly, there is a sense that, um, a lot of these products have been trained in parts of the world, like in California, or, you know, and, and with values and norms that come from there and the people who train them, but they've also been trained with the sweat of the people in the Global South.

• 45:53Speaker 02

  In the sense that, you know, a lot of these tools, they have been trained because there were people sitting in the Global South training them. So, I think when you say sovereignty, in you, I think there are different nuances to it. And there is also these nuances, you know, saying, okay, you know, we are a country that produce so much data, we are a country that produce so much, um, so much, um, uh, so much, sort of, uh, so hungry for innovation, a country that, as, uses, you know, technology every single moment, is, is basically,

• 46:33Speaker 02

  doesn't, doesn't use cash and, and does everything with, with, with a smartphone, and, um, is also saying we want to benefit from it. Yeah, and, um, that's why, you know, saying, when Prime Minister Modi says, you know, it's about inclusion, inclusion means that, you know, is, is, yes, it is AI that speaks our language, but it is AI that features and brings together all our people and doesn't leave people behind, because, you know, it's, this is the nature of the country. So.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  I'm, yeah, to me, this is the, the topic about sovereignty and is, is much on one's and um, and needs to be interpreted, looked at different lenses. And obviously, there are the big geopolitical ones. And then, um, you know, now Europe is going very southern and countries like France, Germany, or France in particular, they're saying, you know, government cannot use Microsoft or whatever. Um, and whether we are able to build something similar, I have no idea. But So, yeah, so sovereignty is a complex argument, I feel. But certainly, there is the, there is the, the fact that, you know, India's

• 47:48Speaker 02

  the message that came through quite clearly was, um, India's capable of, um, creating applications that work for India, that can work for India and make India grow and bring growth to India. Whilst, you know, whilst we do this here and we're able to scale it up so well, you know, we can, we can sort of serve companies and the world um, with this. I think for us, I mean, it's an interesting one because I am a European working for an Indian company as vice president. And

• 48:27Speaker 02

  that gives me a really, I find myself sometimes in a very unique position, being sitting in Europe, in Germany, in the middle of the big debate around sovereignty, working with the Council of Europe and, and, um,

• 48:44Speaker 02

  it makes me, so it's a really interesting position to be in. So I feel that

• 48:53Speaker 02

  I feel that, um, the message is very much, the message that came from the IC summit, you know, is very much of, um, the, the, the role that India is playing worldwide, uh, the potential of, of the country. So it's a sort of a shift from services exporter to innovation architect, but also, you know, uh, and, um, and I think

• 49:26Speaker 02

  For WePro is very much about sort of leveraging the big capabilities that we have in-house, the the the the the fact that operating in a country that and where a lot of our workforce is in India, in a country that wants to put responsible and transparency first. And really being part of the journey where we bring all this to clients worldwide. So to me, the message is very much aligned to what came out of the summit. The fact that it's really important to to that India is a really sort of good partner to work with.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  And WePro is an Indian company, so we're a good partner to work with, not only because of the talents sort of that we have, which is huge, but also because of the appetite for innovation and and the the the big transformation that and big push for for AI that that is India's driving right now.

• 50:29Craig S. Smith?

  And in practical terms, how do the rest of the world take advantage of this new focus? Not very new, but this.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  No, not very new, obviously, but I think it's I think it's I think companies that going they want to go from proof of concept and they want to scale up with AI, they need to do it in a way that brings value in the long term. And they also need to do it in a way which is human, in a way that really brings the entire company with them, in a way to transform, bring long-term value and return for investment. And I think that WePro as an Indian company is the partner to do this with because it's rooted into not just technical capabilities, but also the ability to govern those technical capabilities. Technical capabilities alone are not enough. And this is where I feel and I feel very strengthened.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  By the the India summit and and the the the the the strategy, the AI strategy that India is taking because it reaffirms that commitment to it's not just Wipro's, but he's also country behind it.

• 51:37Craig S. Smith?

  Wipro is building, uh, I mean, you've been traditionally a services consulting company.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, now we are consulting, so we do a lot of consult, so we're consulting that, so we we lead with our consulting arm. And then we do, you know, innovation for clients and from from um back office operation to going agentic to um digitization across healthcare, sort of all of it. It's a massive company, whatever you want to do, we do. It's huge. When I first came from, I was working at Deloitte before, but I first had an interview with an Indian company. So I wa- I always worked in very much Western construct, obviously, you know, Deloitte, um, um Barclays Bank and all of this.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  And then I went to Deloitte, to to to Wipro, remember my first interview when they told me the numbers, I was like, whoa. I was like, it's huge, like, it's a, it's, they're, this, these are very big companies.

• 52:37Craig S. Smith?

  Does Wipro build solutions?

• 52:40Speaker 02

  And so there are, we put build solutions, yeah. And and and also we are, you know, we um use existing solutions, all, I mean, existing L L Ms, existing hyperscalers and and according to how the client wants to do it, but in and um we transform the clients. But it depends, and also there are sort of our own solutions. And then we have developed this two platform, they're called Wagon Wings, which has been really like a really like headache for the past few few months, but it's really good because basically the concept is. It's like when you have a plumber coming to your house and you want the plumber, I mean, she or he comes with with their tools.

• 53:23Speaker 02

  So it's the same. What we basically said is actually, we want to go to clients with our own tools. And some of them would be, of course, partner tools, but some of it is stuff that we've built ourselves. And uh and um and we've created these two platforms where Wega is to build. And Wings is for the operations. So basically Wings is hundreds of agents. You can pick and choose, you can get the entire platform, you can or you can pick and choose the the the sort of the agents to deploy in. And and then you build it to rebuild it to the to the Wega platform. So it's been like an interesting. And that is basically what underpins all the work that we do with our clients. We we work on these two platforms.

• 54:06Craig S. Smith?

  I see. And then uh in those platforms, uh the foundation models. Uh powering them, are they a selection of models?

• 54:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, the existence, yeah.

• 54:19Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, uh including uh open source or are they?

• 54:23Speaker 02

  Including open source, yeah.

• 54:25Craig S. Smith?

  Right, right.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:27Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, do you see anybody in India building uh their own models, uh foundation models?

• 54:37Speaker 02

  It's a uh there's been a lot of debate around this, no? Like people saying why the, I I I I don't know. I think the big, I think in, I think the focus at the moment is really on smaller models. And and very, very big on on applications, the the things that will make a difference to to business life and people's life. And and I think there's a big push on that.

• 55:01Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, and on applications, do you see any particular vertical that's uh that? India is focusing on or that WePro is focusing on?

• 55:12Speaker 02

  Well, we are fa- I mean, we focus on um finance, so financial services, big manufacturing is big. Um automotive is big um and uh healthcare um. I I I mean, I don't know, and you'll have to ask Modi that, I don't know which is the focus that India wants to focus on. Um but I think it cuts across. I mean, the applications for everything in it, and you know, if you think that, you know, it will only increase. Yeah.

• 55:45Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, no, I was thinking not so much top down, but um the market, what is the market?

• 55:53Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, you see, I mean, or is most of the, not most, but is the largest chunk going into healthcare applications or into financial services applications or?

• 56:06Speaker 02

  I think in India cuts across sectors. I mean, but um I'll have to to look into the India I miss- mission to see where, you know, the details of every single sector.