BENGALURU: India has not missed the artificial intelligence (AI) bus, and the absence of more Indian AI companies on stock exchanges should not be seen as a measure of the country’s progress, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday.
She was speaking at a fireside chat at the seventh edition of IITMAA Sangam, the flagship annual conference of the IIT Madras Alumni Association (IITMAA), centred on the national ambition of “Atmanirbhar Bharat – Building a Self-Reliant India”.
She said the perception that India had fallen behind in AI was partly linked to the limited number of AI companies listed on stock exchanges. Listing by itself could not be an adequate measure of the activity and innovation taking place in the sector, she said. India already had AI unicorns and companies nearing that stage, but the funding ecosystem needed to evolve to support them through different stages of growth.
Responding to concerns over the availability of patient and big-ticket capital for emerging technologies, she said companies working in AI and other innovative areas should not necessarily be expected to focus on managerial and financial matters when their core strength was innovation.
The discussion also turned to deep-tech hardware startups, which can take five to seven years to generate revenue. Responding to a startup founder’s concern over the lack of patient capital, Sitharaman asked them to submit, within 10 days, suggestions on what should constitute “early” and “enough” funding, and said she would work on them.
Pralhad Joshi, Union Minister of Education, said, “The event brings together technology, academia, industry, entrepreneurship and public service, supporting India’s journey towards self-reliance and Viksit Bharat 2047. India’s electricity generation capacity has grown from 249 GW in 2014 to 552 GW today, including around 310 GW of non-fossil capacity.”
He further added, “IIT Madras reflects this transformation through 560 startups, 472 patents and Rs 950 crore in alumni contributions. Sangam embodies the spirit of Atmanirbhar Bharat, with discussions on AI, defence and infrastructure, while strengthening alumni engagement across 51 chapters and turning ideas into meaningful contributions towards Viksit Bharat.”
Sridhar Vembu, Chief Scientist and Co-founder, Zoho Corporation, said, “National security today is entirely tech-driven, and critical foreign dependencies can be weaponised against us.
In modern conflicts, nations leveraging an 80% to 90% dominance in commercial drones can deploy USD 50,000 military units against USD 50 million defence systems, a 1,000x cost disparity that underscores the power of hyper-massive industrial scale.
