From Sam Altman viral edit to AI Summit: Delhi fest signals to India’s cinema-tech rise

The Delhi Edition of the AI FIlm Festival on February 17 will be held at Qutub Minar.

When a video surfaced online superimposing Sam Altman, Bill Gates and Sundar Pichai onto characters from the 2011 release Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD), complete with playful “Moshi moshi” greetings, the internet did what it does best: it watched, laughed and shared.

But behind that viral edit was something bigger than meme culture. It was part of a fast-emerging movement to put India at the center of the global AI filmmaking conversation.

“This is about drawing global attention to what’s happening in India,” said Sanket Shah, CEO of InVideo and title sponsor of the Delhi AI Film Festival. “The first goal is to show how important India’s AI ecosystem is becoming. The second is to showcase what’s possible. The industry will need hand-holding to reach mass adoption, and events like this are critical to taking it to the finish line.”

The first edition of the AI film festival was held in Mumbai last year.

InVideo is backing the Delhi edition with around Rs 1 crore in sponsorship.

Shah credits strong government backing for the scale of ambition. “Abhishek Singh, Additional Secretary at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) answers our calls at 11 p.m. How does a venue like Qutub Minar get unlocked without that level of support? The pace and passion behind the India AI Mission is exhilarating,” Shah said.

Be it the ZNMD viral video or the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai famous clip of 'Tussi Na Jao' repurposed to depict NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's last-minute cancellation of the India AI Impact Summit, was shared by Chandan Perla, one of the brains behind the AI Film Festival, alongside Hardeep Gambhir.

From left to right: InVideo's Sanket Shah, Chandan Perla and Hardeep Gambhir along with other team members of the AI Film Festival.

A side project that snowballed

The AI Film Festival began modestly in Mumbai as an experiment, said Gambhir.

“We hosted the Mumbai festival as a side project. We didn’t expect much,” he added. “We just had a hypothesis that video generation was getting better and bigger.”

He pointed to AI film talent getting absorbed by streaming giants and others.

Nearly 80% of filmmakers who showcased their work at the Mumbai edition received job offers—from Netflix, Karan Anshuman's studio Atomic Films that has to its name series like Rana Naidu, Shakun Batra and other leading production houses.

The Mumbai event had also quickly raised $150,000 in sponsorship funding. What followed was unexpected. Instead of returning to their individual career paths—the duo raised $3.5 million to scale the AI film festival concept globally with five more such editions in the pipeline.

Today, most of that funding is going toward building festivals across the world, while the remainder supports two creative labs—one in Bengaluru focused on hardware and creative technology, and another in San Francisco centered on media tech and software innovation. The Bengaluru lab plans to house humanoid robots, 3D printers, while San Francisco will serve as a hub for creators working on AI-powered storytelling tools and media policy.

Delhi edition: Smaller, Sharper, Strategic

Unlike Mumbai, which saw around 600 attendees, the Delhi edition—set to take place at Qutub Minar on February 17—will be deliberately intimate, capped at 150 to 300 stakeholders.

“We’re keeping it exclusive,” Perla explains. “Policy influencers, tech leaders, media executives.”

Industry names expected include representatives from Excel Entertainment, a film production company founded by Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar; possibly Shekhar Kapur, A.R. Rahman’s team and international filmmakers like the Dor Brothers.

Gambhir and Perla are also trying to tap into the big names for the closing ceremony on the 20th.

"I did have a conversation with Sam Altman about attending the AI film festival but he is fully booked with like three dinners every night since the day he arrives. So, I am hoping that for some chance of pulling these people in for the 20th," Gambhir added.

Perla said the format has also evolved. “This time we’re not doing it as a hackathon. We’re accepting any and all AI-made films. We expect much higher quality.”

A global roadmap

The founders now have their sights set beyond India with the AI film festival in San Francisco in May. Los Angeles in June. Tokyo in August. Mumbai again in October. Paris toward the year’s end.

“It’s a lifetime opportunity,” Perla said. “Unlimited funding to travel the world and build this. But it also forces you to ask—are we ready?”

If the viral edit is any indication, the answer might already be unfolding.

What began as a playful remix of tech titans and Bollywood dialogue is fast turning into a serious global platform for AI-powered cinema—with India squarely in the spotlight.