India poised for one million startups by 2035: Nandan Nilekani at Carnegie Global Tech Summit

Speaking at the Carnegie Global Tech Summit, Nandan Nilekani, who is founding Chairman of UIDAI (Aadhaar), said implementing AI at scale in India is built on an existing foundation of digital transformation that has happened for a decade.

"All startups have been solving some problems over the years. The important thing is that we have a million of them. In 2015, we had about 2,000 startups. Today, we have 150,000 startups...we (will) have a million startups in 2035," he said.

"They create a successful company. They go for IPO. All those guys have some options. Suddenly, one startup negates 100 more startups....So that cycle is now in full play. Which problems they will solve...they will solve problems in climate, in energy, in space," he added.

He explained the powerful momentum behind India's entrepreneurial surge, crediting a "virtuous cycle" that fuels continuous innovation.

"India's space story is a fabulous public narrative," he noted, pointing to the increasing role of private innovation in historically state-led sectors.

He also outlined the growth of India's digital public infrastructure.

"April 4th, 2016, Aadhaar reached 1 billion people. April 11th, 2016, UPI was launched. September 2, 2016, architecture was re-founded and was launched with RBI, which is the basis of democratic data. September 6th, 2016, Reliance Jio was launched, which changed the mobile business. November 8th, 2016, currency was withdrawn, also known as demonetization. And December 30th, 2016, Bhim app was launched."

He stressed that these events were not spontaneous but a result of years of silent preparation.

"But for this to happen, things had to have happened before. It's not like one morning we got up and all this happened. It was all developing over the previous few years. So I think the message is that you have to have the patience to build the basic foundation. It will take years. But if you do it well, then events will happen. So I think there's hope for everyone. And this time we can do it much faster. Because we know what we are doing."

He said AI can help bring dynamic contextual information at fingertips.

"When we look at implementing AI at scale in India, it's built on an exisiting foundation of digital transformation that has happened for a decade. With the current thing we have, the predominant languages of the phone are English and Hindi, the user interfaces are touchscreen and you have static knowledge available. Even with that, we have reached more than 500 million users. Today, WhatsApp in India has more than 600 million users, PhonePay has about 350-400 million users, UPI has 400 million users," he said...

"As penetration of phones goes up and we reach a billion phones, what is going to take a billion people to use this? First, language will move from just Hindi and English to every major Indian language and that will make it much more accessible...Second, the UI from keyboard and touch will go to voice and video...Third, because of generative AI and reasoning capability if AI, you will go from static knowledge to dynamic contextual information that is at your fingertips," he added.

He talked about the challenge of implementing AI in the public sector.

"The most difficult is actually implementing AI in the public sector because public sector has structural constraints, it has ministries, departments, everybody is territorial so data is not shared. If data is the lifeblood of AI, we have to find a way to bring all AI together, irrespective of which part of the Government it comes from. So, public sector is the most difficult. Also because public trust is so important, ethical concerns are also important," he said.