NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday met 12 of India's leading AI startups and called for the promotion of affordable and inclusive AI along with frugal innovation and suggested that they present their own AI models to the world that reflect the 'Made in India, Made for the World' ethos. In an interaction ahead of the India AI Impact Summit 2026 to be held in February, the Prime Minister emphasized that startups and AI entrepreneurs are co-architects of India's future and said India has immense capacity for both innovation and large-scale implementation. “The Prime Minister said that the world's trust in India is the country's greatest strength. He emphasized the need to ensure that India's AI models are ethical, fair, transparent and based on data privacy principles,” an official statement said. The 12 AI startups that attended the conference have qualified for the 'AI for ALL: Global Impact Challenge' at the upcoming summit and include Avataar, BharatGen, Fractal, Gan, Genloop, Gnani, Intellihealth, Sarvam, Shodh AI, Soket AI, Tech Mahindra, and Zenteiq. These 12 startups are working on various areas such as basic models of Indian languages, multilingual LLM, speech-to-text conversion, text-to-audio conversion, and text-to-video conversion. Generated AI-powered 3D content for e-commerce, marketing, and personalized content creation. Advanced analytics for engineering simulation, materials research, and data-driven decision-making across industries. such as medical diagnosis and medical research. Furthermore, PM Modi suggested that India's AI model is unique and needs to promote local and indigenous content and regional languages. According to a statement, the startups present at the conference supported the government's efforts towards developing the AI ecosystem, observed that the center of gravity for innovation and adoption of artificial intelligence is starting to shift to India, and highlighted the great promise of the AI sector.
