MeitY Secretary S Krishnan says India’s first foundational AI model could be ready before the AI summit in Delhi next year
MeitY Secretary brushed off the narrative that India is lagging behind other developed nations in terms of AI.
India has shown higher adoption and usage of AI for productive purposes relative to the rest of the world, according to S Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India.
Krishnan was speaking at a conference organised by the STPI Chennai here on Friday in the run up to the AI Impact Summit to be held in Delhi next year.
“Unlike global trends where over 70 per cent of AI is used for recreational purposes, India stands as an exception with significantly higher productive and enterprise use. We are seeing increased adoption of AI across firms and companies,” he said.
Krishnan brushed off the narrative that India is lagging behind other developed nations in terms of AI. “India is now ranked third in the Stanford University’s AI Vibrancy Index among the top countries in the world. This is a particularly noteworthy achievement considering that we are the only developing nation to find a place relative to many other rich and noble countries in the world,” he said.
He added that the government is focusing on frugal compute capabilities for democratising AI access for start-ups, researchers and SMEs while also building sector-specific AI models rather than large general-purpose models. He also mentioned that India’s first foundational model could be ready before the summit in Delhi next year.
On the AI summit to be held next year, Krishnan said that India has chosen the theme of AI impact in line with its approach focusing on positive societal and economic outcomes.
Fear has dominated the way AI has been addressed. The first of the AI summits which was held in the United Kingdom in Lexington Park in November of 2023 was actually called the AI Safety Summit because everyone was worried as to what it could do to the rest of the economy. Now we move from the Safety Summit to an Impact Summit looking at the positive impact that AI can make and how we harness the technology to move forward in this business, he added.
The event also saw the signing of an MoU between STPI and IIT Madras Pravartak Technologies for the promotion of ShaktiDB, an indigenous Relational Database Management System (RDBMS).
STPI will be the chief organiser of the AI Expo, which will be held alongside the AI summit, where organisations from across the world can showcase their innovations in AI.
Published on December 20, 2025
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