Artificial intelligence in India

The main articles are:

• Artificial Intelligence (Global Market)
• India

2025: India creates $1.1 billion state fund to invest in AI startups

In mid-February 2026, the Cabinet of Ministers India approved the creation of a $1.1 billion state venture capital fund to provide financial support to DeepTech (deep technology) projects. We are talking about investments in startups whose activities are related to artificial intelligence robotics, advanced production, etc.

The new program is being implemented according to the "fund of funds" model: public funds are provided not directly to companies, but to private venture capital structures, which, in turn, distribute money between promising startups. Priority will be given to projects designed for a long implementation period with significant investments. In addition, it is planned to assist companies in the early stages, as well as expand investments beyond large cities.

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Фото: Freepik

Indian Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw notes that the startup ecosystem is rapidly developing in the country. Their number increased from less than 500 in 2016 to more than 200 thousand at the beginning of 2026. In 2025 alone, more than 49 thousand startups were registered in India, which is the highest annual figure ever. Financial support from the new state fund will help young promising companies in organizing activities.

In addition, Indian authorities have made changes to regulatory rules aimed at reducing pressure on high-tech companies. In particular, the period during which such firms are classified as startups has been doubled: it is raised to 20 years. The income threshold for obtaining tax, grant and other benefits focused on startups has been changed: the value has been increased to 3 billion rupees, or about $33 million (at the exchange rate as of February 18, 2026), compared to the previously established value of 1 billion rupees.^[1]

2024: India's AI market to grow more than 4.5 times by 2030

The Institute for Statistical Research and Knowledge Economics (ISIEZ) HSE , using a mining system big data , has identified growing trends and expected breakthroughs in the field artificial intelligence of (AI) in, India which is becoming an increasingly prominent global player and manufacturer of advanced AI solutions. The university announced this on August 16, 2024.

India's positions on AI

Large-scale domestic demand for AI technologies in India is combined with strong competencies in this area, active scientific activity (the country ranks 3rd in the world in terms of the number of scientific publications in the field of AI), the development of AI startups (7th in terms of their number).

According to forecasts, by 2030 the AI market in India will grow by more than 4.5 times compared to the current level and exceed $28 billion. Such growth actively stimulates the state, in particular, within the framework of two national programs - support for DeepTech startups (AI is among its priorities) and the IndiaAI Mission program adopted in March 2024 (its investment in AI over five years will amount to $1.2 billion). In order to form a single public digital infrastructure, the Indian government is betting on the creation of a "sovereign AI."

At the same time, significant potential remains for further strengthening the country's position in the field of AI and entering the world market: India, generating more than 7.9% of world GDP (IMF, 2024), occupies only 3.4% in the global AI market. It is possible to close this gap by supporting steadily growing directions and identifying future growth points in advance.

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Фото: HSE ISIEZ

Analysis of big text data from Indian media showed that the main driver of this market today is generative AI technology with a focus on word processing. Generative AI accounts for 10% of India's AI market. Taking into account the expected leading growth (more than 46% annually), the share may double by 2030. One of the most famous Indian projects in this area was the BharatGPT model - a joint development of the telecommunications holding Jio and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay). Unlike ChatGPT, BharatGPT, which is trained on Indian data, can work more efficiently in different Indian languages and take into account the cultural and linguistic characteristics of the country.

Since October 2023, three times more often mentioned in the AI agenda. The peak of popularity falls on February 2024 and is associated with the release of the Krutrim model. Krutrim - the first Indian AI unicorn - has created a large language model of the same name. This neural network surpasses the functionality of the GPT-4 in six Indian languages, is taught to work with all 22 official languages ​ ​ of India and generate texts in 10 languages ​ ​ (including Hindi, Marathi, Telugu and Kannada). The full functionality of the neural network became available to users in early 2024, which provoked an increase in market interest in this topic.

For multilingual India, natural language processing is a very important area of ​ ​ AI, since it creates applications for automatic translation from different languages. With their help, business builds effective multilingual communications with its clients through human-machine interfaces (chat bots, voice assistants, etc.), and educational services provide equal access to knowledge without language barriers. The Indian online education platform BYJU'S uses NLP to create adaptive online courses and personalized educational programs.^[2]

In the longer term, the stake is placed on multimodal AI models that allow you to work simultaneously with different types of information (images, video, audio, etc.), as well as further improving this kind of technology and moving towards "advanced" and "strong" AI.

In a number of areas of AI development, there is a potential for cooperation with Russia, which is facilitated by the process of rapprochement of technological standards in the field of AI launched in 2023 by our countries.

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