Are businesses being setup.
Just to capture grants or subsidies.
Rather than to win the AI race.
The TGS 2026 event was a massive dissalpintment for the hundreds of startups looking for a cheque. Not one deal was signed.
At the same time, TIE must be appreciated for putting up a fairly impressive show, getting four governments to financially support the event and for putting together the logistics to get a bevy of speakers, a hall-full of startups and flying in some of startup India’s most iconic stars into an aqi of 350. I bumped into Harish Mehta the cofounder of Nasscom, had lunch with Silicon Valley maestro Anand Jagannathan, got to glean wisdom from Kanwal Rekhi and catch up with an old colleague Vikram Gupta of Ivycap.
And I wasn’t even in Jaipur to attend the event.
I was there for the Global AI Infrastructure investors meet which just happened to be scheduled on the same days at the same venue. The meeting was looking at allocating USD 250 billion for Ai infrastructure across India to capture a market which would potentially swallow three existing industries:
– the device industry (which will now move from smart phones to edge ai wearables)
– the telco market. Hierarchical networks such as those owned by Airtel and Jio would need to be replaced by flat networks.
– the legacy data centre market which is cyber insecure and completely non optimal for ai. Related to this is the market for SaaS, mobile apps and cloud storage.
The Indian government has to move swiftly to protect indian data. To the nationalist in me, Googles ai plan for India sounds like a well thought through plan to steal Indian data, not to do any nation building or transfer any technology. And they are not alone. Big data is another name for Data dacoits.
You have to throw Google and Amazon out of India. Along with Facebook and Microsoft. Not partner them. They are here for the equivalent of rape and plunder. Not to help. Adani and Ambani are acting like the princely states welcoming the British. Tata is worse.
Countries are either going to lead or be enslaved by ai. We can go the China way or be taken the Venezuela way. Our success in ai will define not just our prosperity, but our very existence as a nation.
To do that, we have to have our own the ai value chain. No one can win the ai war without indian data. And we have to protect it.
This is not a space for two bit startups or fuddy duddy dinosaurs like TCS or TechM. CP Gurnani could see it but failed to act in time.
The govts ONLY role is to prevent theft of Indian data. It is not their job to give subsidies or grants when none are required or recommended. Not one of these so called 12 shortlisted entities is going to go anywhere. BharatGen is our only hope. As are states like Madhya Pradesh. Andhra or Maharashtra or Karnataka is not going to work. NCR could.
Do repost and feel free to criticise.
I am after all just churning the pot because no one else will.
