India rapidly rising as a major player in tech innovation

The country's brightest minds are moving abroad for better research environments.

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"Fundamental research involves asking really difficult and challenging questions, which comes with some amount of risk-taking because you may not go anywhere," said Dr Pushpak Bhattacharyya, a professor of computer science at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay).

Yet, given the right settings, Indians have excelled in AI. Look at Perplexity AI's CEO Aravind Srinivas, who studied for a BTech and MTech at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras before moving to the US to pursue a PhD in computer science.

"Indians are not lacking at all, but India is," said Prof Narayanan.

Convincing top AI talent to stay in India will also require fixing longstanding urban infrastructure issues that affect quality of life—ranging from air pollution to mobility. The importance of such hygiene factors cannot be overstated when top talent can choose to emigrate and leave these woes behind. Which tech bro would risk having his million-dollar villa inundated each monsoon in Gurugram? And who would willingly spend hours commuting in Bengaluru's notorious traffic gridlock, or be held hostage by Delhi's infamous annual pollution season?

IT infrastructure hurdles are a concern too. Despite hosting nearly 20 percent of the world's data, India has just 3 percent of the global data center capacity, a key bottleneck that Deloitte flagged in a May 2025 report.

Even private capital, which accounts for the majority of funding in AI, remains modest. In 2024, the US led private AI investment with US$109.1 billion, followed by China with US$9.29 billion. Meanwhile, India got only US$1.2 billion.