OPINION | From AI anxiety to AI impact: Why the Delhi summit matters

What does India truly bring to the world’s AI table?

As we navigate this new AI world, some noise in the markets around IT stocks is to be expected. This needs to be seen in the context of the bigger picture especially as we open the AI Impact Summit in Delhi today.

Current narrative is reminiscent of the early-stage of fintech

The framing that newer AI tools could potentially be disintermediating the industry reminds me of the early to mid-2010s narrative that positioned fintech as a threat to banking. The choir was led by fintech, venture capitalists, and tech futurists, while banks struggled to offer a counter-narrative, often appearing defensive.

Some of that anxiety feels familiar today. Disruption can be anxiety-inducing for a lot of us, not just established businesses like the IT services industry. However, the anxiety can take on a positive outlook if one wears a disruptor perspective.

Indian IT industry is in a ‘self-disruptive’ mode

The IT services industry is largely in a ‘self-disruptive mode’. This time last year, Nasscom’s study indicated that over 90% of the top 20 technology services companies in India were actively integrating AI, Cloud, and Data across their business functions and driving upskilling efforts to adapt to the evolving technological landscape.

Crucially, as per the latest global analysis from Gartner, while spending on generative AI models is growing rapidly, the IT Services segment is projected to reach a record $1.87 trillion in 2026, growing by 8.7%. This massive pool of funds is flowing toward service providers because enterprises require significant help with cloud modernisation, AI adoption, and cybersecurity.

And this is the part that gets lost in the “disintermediation” narrative. Yes, AI will reduce effort in many tasks. However, enterprise digital transformation is not a patchwork. AI actually helps bring the hard and complex parts forward. It offers tools to modernise old stacks and fix data. Models can then be integrated into real workflows to improve them, reinvent them, and secure them better.

Where IT service providers score

All of this often needs to be done at scale, without breaking mission critical operations. That is exactly the kind of work that often flows to service providers, because most enterprises want experts to do this, while they focus on their business.

A disruption that will fuel progress

But beyond the numbers, it is worth stepping back and asking what disruption has come to mean. Think of how UPI disrupted cash, or how the telecom sector was shaken when data suddenly became nearly free. Disruption is no longer seen as a disturbance, but as fuel for New India’s progress. In boardrooms and startup hubs from Bengaluru to Gurgaon, it is celebrated as the spark that can turn legacy systems into a fast, digital first experience for 1.4 billion people. That is why every other conversation in India is about “leapfrogging”, something that is essential for us to get our per capita GDP to a number we are proud of. It is in this context that we must place AI and the AI Impact Summit.

There are very few moments when the world tries to converge on a single set of technology, i.e., AI as a global mission, with governments, business, and civil society in the same room. Summits are usually government to government events like the G20, G7, BRICS, etc. However, it is in this leader level global summit sequence on AI where the world is trying to steer the future of a tool at the exact same moment it is changing the world. It brings everyone in the same room, including civil society, to figure out how AI can actually improve lives while keeping it under control.

A way to assess the Delhi Summit

So, what should we expect from the Delhi edition? There are many ways one can analyse this. For example, we can follow the money trail and assess the Delhi edition on how it shapes the direction and velocity of money and what truly gets into India and to what use.

Another way could be to look at what progress we can make together on putting the governance into practice. In these outcome-based assessments, the Delhi edition should deliver strong progress. In an increasingly polarised world, India offers the world possibly one of the few places with the scale and convening credibility to have discussions on what may be the most important conversation of our time: how we will truly shape the impact that AI offers to improve lives while keeping it under control.

However, assessing the Delhi edition purely in terms of outcomes, i.e., investments, declarations, etc., would perhaps be missing the wood for the trees. The real value of the impact is in the manner that India has gone about shaping the leadup itself and the work that will happen after the Summit.

Let me explain. India’s first trump card is our talent, its scale, and its global competitiveness. The second is India’s place in the world as a stable, largely neutral, large economy. Together, these strengths position us to build for the world and to expand tech led exports over the long term.

This is also why India has been actively creating an environment for multiple parts of the AI value chain to grow. This has largely been an enabling approach rather than backing a single pathway. Where we needed advanced compute, we have been securing access to it. We are expanding data centre infrastructure to serve both domestic demand and global workloads. We are building large models as well as smaller, specialised ones. Our semiconductor plans are underway. The AI application ecosystem is thriving, and on enterprise AI deployment India ranks among the highest globally.

Therefore, how we leverage the AI Summit to grow exports and bring global AI investments into India will matter. At the same time, it is not all about our strengths. Our 1.4 billion people have many aspirations, and our per capita GDP does not match them by a long shot. Over the last three decades, we have used technology to leapfrog, from mobile connectivity to digital payments and digital identity, and this has changed lives. It is not all rah rah, though. The digital divide remains significant, and technology also arms bad actors to make our lives worse.

Two paths that will shape AI’s impact

As head of public policy at Nasscom, I am particularly interested in how we can collaborate globally on two agendas that will truly shape AI’s impact. The first is governance that is effectively implemented, not just debated, with clearer accountability, proportionate guardrails, and more trusted ways to test, evaluate, and audit AI in the real world.

Industry and government should be able to work better together to help reduce the digital divide and make AI safer for users, including children, the elderly, and those with disabilities.

The second is infrastructure that is more accessible and resilient, so that Indian enterprises, startups, and researchers can build on capacity that is reliable, affordable, and secure. If we get these two right together, we will not just consume AI. We will build it, deploy it responsibly, and export both the capability and the confidence to use it.

Overall, we have many reasons to back ourselves to turn technology led disruption to our advantage. Our success will be measured by our ability to enable growth that is not only accelerated but, more importantly, widely distributed to benefit the masses rather than just a few. Will the Delhi edition of the Summit be an added gravitational assist that helps us slingshot towards our desired orbit? It should, and the real test will be what we build in the months after the Summit.

(Ashish Aggarwal, Vice President - Public Policy, Nasscom.)

Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.