Building India's Sovereign AI Stack with Local Talent and Open Global Collaboration

Explore India's transformative approach to artificial intelligence as a sovereign Digital Public Infrastructure in this keynote presentation. Discover how India is democratizing access to compute, data, and models to ensure AI serves the public good, following the successful models of UPI and Aadhaar. Learn about India's comprehensive strategy that leverages global open-source innovation while building transparent, secure AI infrastructure that avoids vendor lock-in and maintains strategic autonomy. Examine the critical focus on developing local talent within the world's fastest-growing developer community, with emphasis on transitioning from AI consumption to creation through building sovereign Indian language models and high-impact applications for healthcare, agriculture, and other diverse sectors. Understand the key challenges in scaling this vision, including compute availability, high-quality dataset requirements, and the need for deep-tech skills development. Gain insights into how open collaboration and local innovation can create a self-reliant, inclusive AI future, with a direct call to action for engineers to help transform India from an AI adopter to an AI shaper on the global stage.