AI could contribute $500 billion to India’s goal of reaching a $5 trillion GDP by 2025.
Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, announced on Wednesday that the company aims to provide AI training opportunities to 2 million people in India by 2025. He emphasised the need for collaboration between India and the United States on AI norms and regulations.
This initiative focuses on reaching individuals in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, as well as rural areas, with the goal of fostering inclusive socio-economic progress. Nadella expressed his hope for a consensus on global AI regulations to facilitate the technology’s widespread adoption and contribute to equitable economic growth.
During the Microsoft CEO Connection event in Mumbai, part of his annual three-day visit to India, Nadella underscored the importance of equipping over 2 million Indians with AI skills to participate in the evolving job market. He highlighted the efforts of Karya, an AI startup, which engages rural Indians in creating datasets to train large language models in 12 Indian languages, and discussed innovations like the GenAI chatbot Jugalbandhi and the Bhashini language translation project, which aim to improve the lives of people in rural India.
Nadella referred to projections from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, which estimate AI could contribute $500 billion to India’s goal of reaching a $5 trillion GDP by 2025. He described AI as a new capability for making sense of digitalisation and a transformative force for the tech stack, with significant potential to impact GDP.
Puneet Chandok, President of Microsoft India and South Asia, highlighted India’s vibrant startup ecosystem, with over 100,000 startups and 100 new startups emerging daily, as a fertile ground for AI innovation and adoption. Nadella also mentioned how Indian organisations like Axis Bank, HCLTech, and LTIMindtree are among the early adopters of Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot. He encouraged enterprises to explore Microsoft’s Azure AI suite, which allows for the creation of customised AI assistants by fine-tuning and retraining foundational models from OpenAI, Meta, and Mistral AI.
