India must lead in applied AI: Nilekani

India should focus on becoming a global leader in applied artificial intelligence rather than competing in the capital-intensive race to build AI infrastructure, Infosys co-founder and chairman, Nandan Nilekani said on Thursday, adding that the country’s strength lies in deploying AI at population scale through its digital public infrastructure (DPI).

Speaking at the NCAER India Policy Forum 2026 in the Capital, Nilekani said that while global technology companies were investing billions of dollars in data centres, chips and computing power to build larger AI models, India’s opportunity was to make AI work for millions of people through practical applications.