#334 Abhishek Singh: The $1.2 Billion Plan to Turn India Into an AI Superpower

What if the country that trained the world's engineers finally decided to keep them? In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Abhishek, the civil servant leading India's $1.2 billion national AI Mission, to explore how one of the world's largest and most diverse nations is mounting a serious challenge to US and Chinese dominance in artificial intelligence. Abhishek breaks down the honest story behind India's late start. World-class talent, but no research ecosystem to retain it. Digitization without AI-usable data. Compute so scarce that the entire country had fewer than 500 GPUs just two years ago. And a brain drain so severe that the engineers India trained are now running the biggest tech companies in the world, just not from India. Abhishek walks through exactly how the mission is tackling each of those gaps. A subsidized compute program that gives researchers and startups access to 38,000 GPUs at under a dollar per hour. AI Kosh, a national data platform pulling public and private sector datasets into a single AI-ready repository. Centers of Excellence connecting IITs around domain-specific research in agriculture, healthcare, education and mobility. And a sovereign LLM program, with four models already in development and eight more on the way, built specifically for India's languages, voices and needs. We also get into the geopolitics. Where India stands as the US and China carve out competing AI spheres of influence. Why Abhishek is pushing for a UN-led governance framework rather than aligning with either bloc. And what it would actually take for a country of 1.4 billion people to not just catch up, but leapfrog. Subscribe for more conversations with the people shaping the future of AI and emerging technology. Stay Updated: Craig Smith on X: https://x.com/craigss Eye on A. I. on X: https://x.com/EyeOn_AI (00:00) Introduction and Abhishek's Background (02:43) What the India AI Mission Is and How It Started (04:53) The $1.2 Billion Budget and Total AI Investment in India (06:36) Data Center Build-Out and the Road to 7 Gigawatts (08:11) AI Kosh: India's National Data Platform (10:50) Subsidized GPUs and How Researchers Access Compute (12:41) Brain Drain, Reverse Migration and Retaining Top Talent (17:24) Centers of Excellence Across IITs and Key Sectors (19:21) Expanding Fellowships and Training the Next Generation (20:11) Why India Started Late and What Changed (21:48) Sovereign LLMs Built for Indian Languages and Needs (22:42) The Diversity Challenge and Culturally Relevant AI (23:16) Government Funding for Foundation Model Development (24:12) The AI Impact Summit and India's Role on the Global Stage (24:52) India, China, the US and the Battle for AI Governance (29:37) The UN Framework and India's Third Way (31:16) India-China Relations and New AI Partnerships (32:01) How the $1.2 Billion Budget Was Decided (33:31) Can India Actually Catch Up With the US and China

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

• 0:00Craig S. Smith?

  A couple of decades ago, India and China were roughly equivalent. Both were hungry, both were opening their economies, both were sending brilliant young scientists out into the world. Then China hit the accelerator. It built labs the size of small airports. It repatriated senior researchers. It handed them compute and it treated AI like a national moonshot. India meanwhile rode a different wave. IT services and outsourcing, well its English language advantage made leaving easier than staying. The country produced world-class engineers, but it didn't build a world-class research ecosystem to hold them. That gap mattered.

• 0:43Craig S. Smith?

  Without deep investment, labs, compute, mentors, long-term research culture, India became a training ground for the global tech industry rather than a proving ground for its own. Some of the brightest minds left and never looked back, going on to lead Google, Microsoft and many other tech titans. This was never a talent question. But India is finally treating AI as infrastructure, building national data centers, national data repositories and funding AI research in a bid to catch up with China. I'm doing a series of podcasts on that question. Why did India fall behind after starting shoulder to shoulder with China?

• 1:28Craig S. Smith?

  What did decades of underinvestment cost them? What will it take to build labs that people return to, not escape from? And with US and China so far ahead in research output, compute budgets, industrial adoption, can India become something more than a secondary player? In the first of these episodes, I sit down with the head of India AI mission, Abhishek Singh, to talk about India's national program to rapidly scale its artificial intelligence ecosystem from building vast data centers and the AI cosh data platform to fostering homegrown talent and

• 2:10Craig S. Smith?

  Creating centers of excellence across the countries. If you're curious about how one of the world's largest and most diverse nations is tackling the opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence, both at home and on the global stage, this conversation is not to be missed. Could you introduce yourself to listeners in the United States and around the world? About who you are and what your role is of the India AI mission and what India AI mission is?

• 2:43Speaker 01

  I'm a civil servant, career civil servant, with almost thirty years of experience of having worked in diverse roles across the country, various states. I worked in the extreme northeastern state of Nagaland. I worked in Uttar Pradesh. I worked in government of India for long tenures. I primarily spent a lot of time, in fact, in the field of technology. In fact, I may say that in almost every role that I have had, I've worked on projects which deal with using technology for improving governance. In my present role where I'm leading the AI mission, along with my additional role as additional secretary in the ministry and also director general of National Informatic Center,

• 3:23Speaker 01

  I'm responsible for implementation, execution of India's 1.2 billion dollar AI mission. And this is my fifth, sixth year in this ministry, in this tenure. Prior to this, again, I spent three years, this was when I was leading Digital India projects, the Common Service Centers project, the, I was part of the Aadhaar project, has been involved with the conceptualization of the India stack, implementation of various projects. And then whether it was Myga, whether it was Digilocker, several of the, at least ten to twelve of India stack projects I have been directly involved with, leading them. I also led the Karam Yogi Bharat, the Igot training platform, the technical platform that we built.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  So primarily a civil servant with a lot of experience of working in the technology sector within the government.

• 4:14Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah. And how long has India AI mission existed?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  India AI mission was of course approved formally by the cabinet last year and by the government. The funding was approved last year in March. But we were working on conceptualizing India's strategy of AI. We had come out with this national strategy of AI in twenty eighteen. We're taking up projects in various dimensions like for building compute, for building data sets, for building applications that was ongoing. But the big mega India AI mission was approved in March of twenty twenty four. And since then I have been leading it, but on AI related projects I have been working for almost close to four years.

• 4:52Craig S. Smith?

  I see. And you mentioned two billion, is that US dollars?

• 4:57Speaker 01

  One point two billion US dollars.

• 4:59Craig S. Smith?

  One point two.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  That's the government spending. And in addition, the private sector is also investing in AI like for example for enabling the compute infrastructure. While government is kind of providing support for the end users. And government's commitment is as I mentioned across the seven pillars, one point two billion dollars. But the private sector in India has already invested around two billion dollars for enabling the compute that is available. And in addition, various government of India departments like health, education, agriculture and state governments, they were also investing money. So they will be anywhere between two to three billion dollars. So total public investment on AI in India would be somewhere around five to six billion dollars.

• 5:42Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, I know there's seven pillars, seven pillars is a lot to talk about. So I wanted to focus on on the data center build out. I think right now you have three or four gigawatts of data center capacity. And the projections I've seen of reach ten gigawatts by twenty thirty. Is that purely Indian government or does that include, I know it's.

• 6:13Craig S. Smith?

  The Stargate, the US Stargate program has promised to build, I think, a billion dollars worth of compute data centers in India. So, that building up to ten gigawatts, is that, does that include everything, or is that Indian government only?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  It does include everything, it does include everything. And actually, the installed data center capacity in India is presently the one which is operational across the private sector, across government, is only one gigawatt. But it's, but there's a lot of committed investments which are there. So, we have already, data center capacity which we announced and which is currently being built, that will take the overall capacity to three to four billion, three to four gigawatts. Like, for example, Microsoft has announced the initiative for building a three billion, they announced three billion dollars for their gigawatts. Then, Google is looking at expanding their data center capacity in India. GIO announced a one gigawatt data center that they're building in Janm agar. And then, Stargate,

• 7:19Speaker 01

  we read about the announcements, where part of the Stargate investment that they are building, compute capacity globally, part of it will come to India. That will be again probably another one gigawatt. So, we do believe that by twenty thirty, we should be able to reach somewhere around five to seven gigawatts.

• 7:36Craig S. Smith?

  I see, about twenty thirty, five to seven, okay. And then, India has a lot of people, you have a lot of data, you have this amazing fingerprint database, it's kind of the wonder of the world. Can you talk about, I guess it's called the India Kosh, the data platform that's pulling together data from breaking silos and creating a national repository?

• 8:11Speaker 01

  See, one of the key components for building A I is data. Yeah. Like of course, the other two being talent and compute. Talent, we have a plenty, like we are known for to be the I T garage for the whole world. And compute is something that we are augmenting, but most importantly, the real ingredient, the raw material for building A I models, training models. Building A I applications is data. So while we have had a lot of digitization with the Aadhaar project, the identity project you spoke about. The digital payments project and digital projects in almost every domain. But very often, the data set that we had was in many ways not A I usable.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  In order to make the data sets available and accessible in a form in which A I developers and application developers could use them. We are setting up this platform, the India data set platform called A I Kosh. Kosh in Hindi means repository. Yeah. So in a way, it's a repository of data sets. And we are getting the public sector departments, whether it's agriculture or healthcare or education and all government. You know, department of state governments to share data on this platform. And in addition, we opened this platform even to the private sector entities. If there are telecom operators or other private sector players, hospitals, schools, if they want to share the data, they can also do that.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  And when they do this, they are sharing on the platform, the policies ensure that ultimately the data owner. The person who is the I P over the data, he has the rights, he has a control over the mechanism of sharing of data. Whether they want it to be in open domain, whether they want it to be restricted in case some costing is required. Or if it is restricted for access only to public users or to researchers. So that entire control with regard to who has access to this data is provided by the, by the, is done by the data owner. So this ensures that people have an equal right. And then we also have a lot of tools on the platform, data anonymization tools, privacy preservation tools.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  So if anyone is publishing data sets on the platform, he will have an option of cleaning the data and then putting it up on the platform. So that you are compliant with the, with the Digital Personnel Protection Act and other laws. And in addition, we also, what we have done is along with data sets, we have hosted models on the platform and provided a sandbox kind of environment. So that if there are researchers or entrepreneurs who want to try out certain applications or build A I applications on the fly on the platform, they can access compute, they can access data sets, they can access tools, they can access models and then build A I applications on the on the platform, the A I coach platform.

• 10:50Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, and and for researchers, I mean, I'm particularly interested in research. Uh, how how do do the I I Ts, for example, access the computers or, uh, I think I read there's voucher system kind of like uh, Google has a credit system for academics.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  So like compute was identified as one of the bottomless that we had in our A I story. Like till last year, the number of G P U's that was available in India was around five hundred G P U's only. So that was a big, big constraint with regard to doing anything related to A I. So that's like the fundamental building block that you need if we want to move forward. So what we did was that instead of government buying compute, what we did was we incentivized private sector players to invest in the A I compute infrastructure, get the N V D R and other G P U's chips there, set up the cloud, set up the infra, provide it to the end users, and we came up with a policy to the end users will be subsidized to the extent of forty percent of the compute cost.

• 11:54Craig S. Smith?

  Yes.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  So that and through this tendering bidding process, we got very attractive competitive rates. So today, almost thirty eight thousand G P U's have been made available through this mechanism to end users who have to pay only an average sixty five rupees, which is less than a dollar per G P U per hour compared to the international prices of two point five to three dollars per G P U per hour. So that way, researchers in I I Ts or even small engineering colleges or entrepreneurs or startups who are working on A I applications and models, they can access the compute, they can come to our portal, they can give their requirement and then the system will allocate them compute and they will be able to use that. So they pay only sixty percent of the cost, which is much lesser

• 12:37Speaker 01

  and we bear the cost up to forty percent.

• 12:40Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, uh, and and you mentioned talent, uh, certainly, uh, India has, uh.

• 12:47Craig S. Smith?

  Huge number of engineers, almost as many as China, I think.

• 12:54Craig S. Smith?

  But in talking to the IITs, there, there is a historic problem. That the best and the brightest go overseas for a PhD and don't come back. These Indians running the top tech companies in the United States. And, and so there's, there's, there's also a problem with Google coming in and Meta coming in. And hiring away the top talent for the IITs. And so the concern is, there, there isn't the human capital at the IITs to train the next generation. Of researchers because they keep on getting pulled away.

• 13:38Craig S. Smith?

  Is there, I, I, I saw in my reading that. There is a, a proposal, if not a program, to offer.

• 13:49Craig S. Smith?

  Globally competitive salaries to some research, researchers. How, how do you address that brain drain out of the IITs?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  See, this is a very, very valid problem and challenge that we have. We do lose our best of the talents to the, to the Western, American universities and, and corporations. In fact, very often they give them such offers that it becomes very difficult to refuse. And if you look at whether it's Microsoft, led by Satya Nadeela or Google led by Sundar Pichai. And hosts of other companies at various levels. Indian engineers have been part of almost every big tech firm in the United States. And elsewhere, even in Europe, the companies which are there. We do have Indian talent going into the universities also for doing research. So we do have various ways and means to try to solve this problem.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  We have had extensive consultations with regard to, to, with many of the experts who have gone. Like what will it take for them to come back? The one, one of course thing is that maybe funding. So through India AI mission and through. Yeah, the research and development grant scheme which has been approved under which funding support is given to those Indian experts who are returning to take up projects here. So that is, that's, that's of course ongoing and some of them are like making, like one of the teams which got awarded for building foundation models of India, are like Stanford graduates who are wanting to return and build something here. But the biggest challenge is that very often these researchers, they say money is just a small part.

• 15:25Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  What they also need is a complete ecosystem of support which is available in the valley, in the Silicon Valley. So because there's a good network of venture capitalists and academic professors, experts. So that is something that we're currently trying to build up in India as well. We do have certain professors who have returned and who are leading such initiatives, whether you, you know, whether you, there's Professor Ganesh in I T Bombay, the Professor Mitesh Kapoor in I T Madras. Then some of the faculty members have with corporate companies. So while reverse Bain drain has started to happen. But what we need to do is to provide minimal incentives, especially expand our investment in R and D,

• 16:08Speaker 01

  provide more financial support, create a network of academic experts across institutions within India, who can work together, have other means of partnership with American universities as well. Even if there are experts in, in the US, how they can collaborate with researchers here and work together on joint projects. Those are some things that both Vincere Electronics and I T here and Department of Science and Technology are working on. And hopefully we will see in the days to come. And especially with the current geopolitical situation, there are a lot of uncertainty in the United States.

• 16:41Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  So that's also in a way an opportunity for us to, the H one B visas are restricted. Then maybe the silver lining in the cloud will be that some of our talented fellows will not get the visa, not get the green card. And they will come back and then they will build something of a future and we will provide all the support that we need.

• 17:00Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, in these, this ecosystem you're talking about, I know one of the pillars is the centers of excellence. Uh, what does that mean? Is, is that, uh, building up, uh, A I schools within the I I Ts? Is that, uh, startup, uh, centers around the country? I mean, what, what is centers of excellence?

• 17:24Speaker 01

  See, center of excellence is a program that we started in partnership with, with the Department of Higher Education. Which felt that while there's a lot of research which is going on in a particular sector in silos. Like for example, A I in healthcare, maybe some professor is doing some work in one I A T, someone is doing some work in another I A T. And then there is no connect between all of them. And maybe each one of them is solving a different part of the whole problem. So if we can bring them together in a hub and spoke model. So what happens is that one anchor institution becomes the nodal institution for that sector. So for example, the Center for Excellence in, in Agriculture, I A T Roper has been given the responsibility.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  So I A T Roper, the experts who are there at that I A T will form the nucleus. And along with that, there will be other affiliate institutions which will work with the, with the central institution. And they will share expertise, they will share data sets, they will share applications. And together they will be able to build something which is much more worthwhile for the whole sector. Similarly, we have a Center for Excellence in Smart Mobility that's incubated in I T Cancun. We have a Center for Excellence in, in Education, which is coming up at I D Matras. Then we have a Center for Excellence in Healthcare, which is being jointly developed by A I M S, the Holiday Institute of Medical Sciences. And in Institute of Science Bangalore. So that way, different academic institutions, they provide the leadership.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  And bring together all the experts in a particular domain, so that they are able to work in a collaborative manner. And add value to the research or the, uh, application that they're developing.

• 19:03Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, uh, but this education remains a bottleneck. I mean, there's a gap.

• 19:10Craig S. Smith?

  Uh between a number of AI experts or senior researchers and the number that's needed. Is that right or?

• 19:23Speaker 01

  See, like, like, of course, of course, there is a, so, so what we've also done is that enhance the number of fellowships that we have. You know, like expanded number of seats that are there in the IITs, the engineering colleges. To provide more fellowships at undergrad level, at the masters level and at the PhD level. Invest more money in compute, provide more support for getting data sets. Provide more support for getting expert advice from, from leading scientists in the field. So in a way, in a way, it's like several steps altogether, which are being targeted to ensure that we are able to.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Train our human resource in the domain of AI, data science, machine learning, deep learning and be able to compete with the best.

• 20:11Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, uh and, and it seems, I mean, AI is moving so quickly that. That you can come in and, and very quickly be at the cutting edge. Uh but why did India take so long to, to start this initiative? Uh whereas you've obviously been watching the United States and China invest heavily in, in, in compute and. And data and human resources, but was there a systemic reason or a political reason? Or, uh, yeah, why, why is India late getting on the Ben program?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  See, we are, but one can say that we are late, but as I mentioned that we had come out with our, with our national AI strategy in twenty eighteen.

• 21:07Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  And then of course, there, there was a disruption for some time because of COVID and other reasons. And that required allocating resources to sectors that needed the most.

• 21:16Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  So, so we were working on it, plus at the same time finalizing the plan. But what we have achieved in the last one year of the program is quite significant. And we do hope that we will be able to not only catch up with the, with the United States and China, but maybe leapfrog. Especially with the with the expertise that we have and with the with the efforts that our researchers are making.

• 21:38Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, uh so the program, the A I uh India A I mission, but is it a what's the timeline that you're looking at?

• 21:48Speaker 01

  See, the whole program that we have is is for five years to begin with, but and we are already in the second year. So we do hope that by the by early next year, when we are hosting the Impact Summit in February twenty twenty six. We will have something very tangible to show to the world. And the L L M's that our startups are building will be different from what we have known so far. And it will be customized for Indian requirements, it will be built for Indian needs, it will be more language focused, it will be more voice enabled. So that's that's the way our researchers are working towards building something. So we do have faith in their expertise, in their abilities and their talent, and we are hopeful that what they build

• 22:31Speaker 01

  will not be a copy of a chat G P T or other tools that we are used to. But it's something which will be which will be truly designed to meet the challenges that we have in India.

• 22:42Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, and there there are unique challenges because of the diversity of language and diversity of religion.

• 22:52Craig S. Smith?

  Is is, I mean, there's been a lot of talk of sovereign A I of of different countries building their A Is for their domestic uh cultures. Uh is there a a government effort to build uh sovereign L L M's or or A I systems? Or is it happening at the in the private sector?

• 23:16Speaker 01

  It's happening in the private sector and in our academy institutions, but it will be funded by the government. We are providing financial support and here when we are providing funding support, we are providing the entire compute costs. So we already have four efforts which are currently ongoing, eight more have been finalized, which we'll likely to be announced very soon. And one of them is actually will be at one of the I I Ts. So it will be not be a startup driven effort, but it will be an academy institution driven effort. And since the I I Ts, which is technically a government institution, that we are trying to position as a sovereign effort for building an L L M. And a lot of funding is involved there and a lot of expertise, a lot of experts from across the country are coming together to build such an alliance.

• 23:57Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, and can I ask which I I T?

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Let that prerogative with the our minister when he make the announcement.

• 24:03Craig S. Smith?

  Okay, okay. Uh, and and the uh, the the the the event next year, I'm hoping I'll be invited.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Yes, we love to have you at the Impact Summit in twenty nineteen, twenty twenty. Nineteen and twentieth of February, because we co-chaired the Action Summit, which France hosted this year. Uh, which was in the series of the Bletchley Park and the Seoul Summit and the Paris Action Summit. The for next summit, which we are calling it the AI Impact Summit, which will look at the impact of AI on the key sectors, on people, on planet, on progress. So that will be deliberated and we are expecting experts from across the world, from industry, from academia, from government to come in. So would love to have somebody like you to join in and you will get many more opportunities to talk to many more experts from across the world.

• 24:52Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, uh, China, you know, is is the is the the big behemoth in in all of this. I mean, certainly the United States is, but China has been making moves recently to develop a uh, a governance organization uh, that would include the quote-unquote Global South.

• 25:18Craig S. Smith?

  Would India participate in that?

• 25:22Craig S. Smith?

  The way it looks is the the U S uh, is is uh, working through allies and also you know, with kind of a carrot and stick approach to to get countries to adopt their AI government structures and standards. China now is moving to create a a sphere of influence of its own. And it looks to me that it's it's gonna be too. Two zones, there would be the Chinese dominated zone and the US dominated zone. Where does India stand in that?

• 26:03Speaker 01

  See, like, this is like a topic on which we, there have been a lot of discussions, debates going on for a long time. And the way I see it converging, especially with the, on something which China is also aligned and on other parts of the world is also aligned is maybe something that's driven into the, under the ages of the United Nations. Because AI is a global technology, there are stakeholders involved. We cannot exclude any major player from any governance framework because if that you do, then it will be limited governance.

• 26:40Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  So the UN Global Digital Compact, the effort that they have made, the UN High Level Advisory Body on AI which was constituted, they are coming out with institutional framework which will allow all countries to have a stake in deciding how the AI governance will shape up. So we are more aligned to something that will ultimately work. And our way to approach this subject has always been Indian way, rather than American way and China and the Chinese way. So we have our own approach which work towards, which work towards having a regulatory framework which ensures promoting, building innovative solutions that can solve societal challenges

• 27:23Speaker 01

  in various key sectors like healthcare, agriculture, education, and which also gives the global south a voice in trying to ensure that the AI applications models are more inclusive, they are not biased, they incorporate the data sets of, of, of the large majority, including India, the country, the global south. How do we ensure bring them there? How do we ensure democratization of AI resources? How do we ensure that researchers from across the world get access to compute, get access to data sets, get access to algorithms? So that has been our principle and we have been, even when we led the global partnership on AI, we came out with a new inclusive partnership with OECD and other countries.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  So we do hope that ultimately that will be the approach the world will take. In fact, the discussions at the summits also have moved on from. Focusing entirely on safety and security to India's approach of having a balance between innovation and and regulation. And if you look at even the evolution of the summit at Bletchley Park, it was only safety and security. At Korea, it became Seoul summit, it became safety and innovation. And in Paris, it was about action and it included safety and security. What there one particular, there are other four themes also. Which looked into public interest AI, future of work, sustainability. So those issues also came into the forefront.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  So what we have been doing for the last several years is that championing the cause of ensuring that AI is more democratized. AI addresses key social challenges, focusing on building applications that can benefit the larger humanity. Working on tools and methodologies to restrict user harm. And that's the principle that we need to take forward. If these are incorporated in the US White House Action Plan, to some extent, they have already been. Your White House Action Plan has also moved away from the AI diffusion rules which had come in January. And similarly, China is also like, if you look at the Chinese Action Plan. It also reflects many of the things that we have been advocating at various forums.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  So we are hopeful that the global order that will emerge will be more inclusive. And will reflect the views of India and the countries of the world.

• 29:37Craig S. Smith?

  But India will be operating primarily through the UN framework. Not, not through the US

• 29:47Craig S. Smith?

  organizations or through China's organizations. Or, or will India take the lead and create its own governance and standards organization and, and to try and pull in the, the global south. I mean, India is perfectly positioned for that.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, you see, the countries of global south are looking at India for providing a lot of support. And we are committed to provide them support when it comes to like the D P I story is known for everyone. Like we implemented digital public infrastructure at population scale. And at the G twenty, it was recognized as a strategy and one of the key declarations of the G twenty was that. India, along with the G twenty countries, will build up a global D P I repository. And that work is ongoing. So here also in A I, many countries of global south are looking at. Uh at leveraging India's expertise in building a global A I use case repository. So we are working towards that. The G P A we have been advocating the same story. We have been part of the G seven friends group, we have been part of the U N high level advisory committee on A I.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Of course, we did not attend the China summit, but the overall approach that we have been advocating. Is in many ways captured in the document that China has. So I think we see a lot of alignment globally on the approach that India has been advocating. Whether it will be a yuan body or whether it will be. Um separate organization or a technical standards organization. That is something that's currently being debated at various forums.

• 31:16Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, uh and with the the recent warming of relations with India. Uh Prime Minister Modi was was just there as we all know. Uh is is there any increase in cooperation on A I research or A I infrastructure. Uh between India and China.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  The visit has just concluded. Um so we will have to see what are the domains in which we will be moving forward. We just had a visit of the Prime Minister of Singapore today. And that declaration does mention A I exclusively of working together on creating joint labs, joint projects and this. We have active partnership with countries like Japan, with France, with U K, with the United States. So currently that's the domain in which we are presently work.

• 32:01Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, and then I'll I'll finish up, but the.

• 32:06Craig S. Smith?

  The one point two billion, uh, how did you you arrive at that number? Did you want more is, uh, uh, I mean, everyone always wants more, but the government, uh, does it have the resources to to provide the funding that you need? Uh, and and after the five years, what are the funding goals?

• 32:30Speaker 01

  See, we have a capital to our honorable prime minister that whatever we need will be given to us. There's no restraint, there's no constraint of funding at today's uh, time and age. So we had estimated that this is what we need, basic minimum, to trigger the whole ecosystem. And in case we suppose this is the one point two billion we have for five years. In case we are able to exhaust the funding in say three years, we can always go back to the government and get more funding. So that assurance that we have, that support we have of honorable prime minister, he's always been egging us on and in working towards building something that is state of the art, that's like

• 33:11Speaker 01

  global, that can, uh, that can be offered to countries of global south. If there's an AI solution which can help diagnose tuberculosis or an AI solution that can help, uh, uh, meet the needs of farmers or transform education, then we should build it and we should offer it to the whole world for usage.

• 33:31Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, uh, and then my last question, you said that the the goal is to catch up with US and China. Do you have a ballpark for when you think that's possible? Uh, it's five years, ten years, twenty years? Because China and the US are are advancing at the same time, the number of gigawatt data centers and all of that.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  I would not like to put a timeline to this, but here the aspiration level is there and we are working towards that goal step by step, one step at a time. And, uh, and, uh, as long as we're able to, uh, to. Provide the enabling ecosystem, the role of the government is to provide an enabling ecosystem. And we have faith and confidence in our researchers and startup entrepreneurs that they will be able to help us move forward. Yeah. So we will, we have done that, we launched a lunar probe at a fraction of the cost of what it costs. So we have seen achievements in several sectors. Sometimes it does take time, but we reached there. So the commitment of the government is there, so we, we, so putting a timeline.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  I will say that as long as we are firmly on the path towards achieving what we want to achieve, maybe we should be able to catch it soon.