New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 16 January called on Indian startups to prioritise the development of indigenous artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, built by domestic talent and hosted on Indian servers, as the country marks a decade of the Startup India initiative.
Addressing startups on National Startup Day, which also commemorated 10 years of the flagship programme, Modi urged entrepreneurs to double down on manufacturing and focus on creating globally competitive products within the country. He said India should aim to take a leadership position in emerging startup trends and frontier technologies.
“The nation that advances the most in the AI revolution will have that much greater an advantage. For India, this work has to be done by our startups,” Modi said. Referring to upcoming global engagements, he added, “The AI Impact Summit is happening in February, and it is a big opportunity for all startups.”
Highlighting the strategic importance of AI, Modi said several new domains would play a critical role in India’s economic security and strategic autonomy. “The more a country is ahead in the AI race, the higher its advantage. Our startups have to do this job for India,” he said.
On the IndiaAI Mission, Modi said over 38,000 GPUs have already been onboarded. “Our effort is that big technology is available to small startups. Indigenous AI should be developed by Indian talent on Indian servers,” he noted.
Modi also pointed to government initiatives such as Atal Tinkering Labs, hackathons and incubation programmes, aimed at enabling young innovators to solve national challenges and ensuring promising ideas are not lost due to a lack of resources.
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