NITI Aayog Launches AI Roadmap to Power 8% Growth Ambition
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman stressed the urgency of nationwide adoption.
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In a move to accelerate India’s ambition of becoming a global leader in frontier technologies, NITI Aayog has launched the AI for Viksit Bharat Roadmap: Opportunity for Accelerated Economic Growth, along with the NITI Frontier Tech Repository under its Frontier Tech Hub.
The roadmap outlines how AI could add significant momentum to India’s economic growth through three core levers: accelerating AI adoption across industries (bridging 30–35% of the productivity gap), transforming R&D with generative AI to unlock 20–30% of innovation-driven opportunities, and strengthening India’s technology services industry to contribute an additional 15–20%.
It also identified potential long-term outcomes, including making India the data capital of the world, building an adaptable AI-skilling ecosystem, unlocking sectoral growth in manufacturing, finance, pharma, and automotive, and future-proofing jobs through continuous reskilling. The report highlights the role of the ₹10,000 crore India AI Mission in powering these outcomes, through federated compute networks with 38,000+ GPUs, India-specific large language models, anonymized public datasets, and AI skilling across Tier 2 and 3 cities.
Leaders Call for AI-led Transformation
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman stressed the urgency of nationwide adoption. “AI-assisted technologies should be adopted in all districts of India to bring development. I would want them all to emerge as success stories of innovation and development,” she said.
Echoing this sentiment, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister for Railways, Information & Broadcasting, and Electronics & IT, said, AI is going to fundamentally change the way people work and live. He emphasized that the biggest shift today is the confidence instilled in India’s youth that they can dream of Viksit Bharat, with growth that is robust, inclusive, and driven by technology.
NITI Aayog CEO B.V.R. Subrahmanyam called AI the unlock for India’s 8% growth ambition. “The AI for Viksit Bharat Roadmap delivers a clear, sector-specific action plan, while the Frontier Tech Repository inspires states and districts to scale technology for real-world impact,” he said. He also announced two new initiatives: the Frontier 50 Initiative, which will support 50 aspirational districts/blocks in deploying repository use cases, and the NITI Frontier Tech Impact Awards to recognize states excelling in tech-driven governance, healthcare, education, and livelihoods.
Debjani Ghosh, Distinguished Fellow at NITI Aayog and Chief Architect of the Frontier Tech Hub, warned that the next wave of mega tech shifts would be even more disruptive than AI. She stressed that for India to lead, it is imperative to anticipate trends early and craft hardwired roadmaps to strengthen supply chains, define global standards, and forge strong alliances.
The Frontier Tech Repository, a collection of 200+ impact stories from across India in agriculture, healthcare, education, and national security, illustrates how startups, states, and district officials are already deploying frontier technologies with measurable outcomes.
The launch event brought together startup founders, district magistrates, industry leaders, and government officials from across the country, demonstrating how AI and frontier tech are steadily transforming governance, services, and livelihoods at the grassroots level.
