Highlights: From launching successful space missions on a budget and landing on the dark side of the moon, to digitalising the Indian economy with its unique Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and unlocking new engines of growth – India’s tech innovations in the last 10 years have been nothing short of a tech alchemy - transforming the nation and pushing out its productivity frontier. The rollout and rapid adoption of DPI, aka, the ‘India Stack’ unlocked the economic primitives of Identity, Data and Payments and democratised tech across India’s population, making it the third most digitalised nation, with the third biggest start-up ecosystem in the world. But technology seldom stays still. India now finds itself in the midst of a global “AI arms race”, led by the US and China. In this new digital world order, India can’t afford to become a laggard. But does India have what it takes to be at the forefront of this global AI race? Can India develop its own AI model?

• Recent rise of cheaper & efficient models like DeepSeek has shown that in this AI race, brains will conquer the brawn. As such, ‘distilling’ the already exiting opensource AI models to develop an indigenous Indian AI model & localised applications is the way to go
• Thanks to DPI, we believe India already has the basic building blocks in place. With one of the most thriving start-up ecosystems in the world already deploying AI powered tools in their core services, the scope for India to build its own AI model and develop its unique applications has widened. If India manages to: a.) Upskill, nurture, and retain its indigenous Tech talent; b.) Create a public repository of its unleveraged Data pools; c.) Up its AI R&D capabilities; and finally, d.) Top it all with its secret sauce of ‘Frugal Innovation’, it should be able to develop its own AI model and potentially become an AI applications hub. In addition, India’s ability and focus on developing its own renewable sources of energy like solar, wind and nuclear power should add to its energy security and self-reliance - an absolute essential in this global AI race
• By taking such a strategic, comprehensive, and multi-pronged approach to addressing gaps in its AI ecosystem, we believe – India - already a tech superpower in its own right, can make yet another ‘tech-tonic’ shift in its journey of innovation - this time from DPI to AI. If this happens, AI will be able to turbocharge the benefits of its Digital Public Infrastructure and unleash enormous economic and social positives at scale. As such, AI is estimated to contribute $1trn to India’s GDP by 2027 and create over 30 million jobs
• In this report, we deliver actionable insights on how to best leverage the domestic opportunities created by India’s tech revolution thus far and the new opportunities that advancements in AI could offer, especially in sectors like India’s digital consumption, financials, and healthcare. Our investment themes on the Rise of India and ASEAN and Power up Asian Shareholder Returns capture these investment opportunities well