Indian AI Startups Pitch Global Ambitions Ahead of AI Impact Summit

India’s artificial intelligence (AI) startups are sharpening their global ambitions, positioning indigenous foundation models, multilingual large language systems and applied AI tools as the next phase of the country’s technology export story, as founders briefed policymakers ahead of next month’s India AI Impact Summit 2026.

Twelve Indian AI startups, selected under the summit’s Foundation Model Pillar, presented their work on Thursday across areas ranging from Indian-language and multilingual LLMs to healthcare diagnostics, engineering simulations, materials research and generative AI for commerce and marketing.

The roundtable brought together companies working on speech-to-text, text-to-audio and text-to-video systems, 3D content generation for e-commerce, and data-driven analytics for industrial and medical use cases. 

Founders argued that India’s large talent base, growing compute infrastructure and expanding domestic demand are beginning to shift the center of gravity of AI development toward the country.

Some participants said the focus has moved beyond applications built on foreign models toward developing Indian foundation models that can handle local languages, regional data sets and cost constraints at scale, a strategy they believe could differentiate India in a global AI market dominated by US and Chinese players.

Startup leaders also highlighted rapid growth in enterprise adoption of AI across sectors such as healthcare, manufacturing and digital commerce, and said India’s ability to deploy models at population scale could become a competitive advantage as global companies look for lower-cost, high-volume AI solutions.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who chaired the roundtable, said Indian AI should reflect the principle of “Made in India, Made for the World,” and emphasized the need for ethical, unbiased and transparent models with strong data-privacy safeguards, a government statement said.

The interaction comes ahead of the India AI Impact Summit 2026, scheduled to be held in India next month, where policymakers and industry leaders are expected to outline India’s approach to AI governance, domestic model development and international collaboration.

The participating startups included Avataar, BharatGen, Fractal, GAN, Genloop, Gnani, Intellihealth, Sarvam, Shodh AI, Soket AI, Tech Mahindra and Zenteiq. Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and minister of state Jitin Prasada also attended the meeting.