OPINION | The new AI equation and India’s role in shaping the future of leadership

Artificial Intelligence

The global AI race is no longer just a US - China contest. India, with its digital inclusion, linguistic diversity, and vast AI talent, is emerging as a third force. It has the potential to drive a new leadership model - balancing purpose, inclusion, and performance over pure competition.

Parallel strengths, shared challenges

Silicon Valley has perfected risk-taking and scaling ideas but now faces challenges around trust, transparency, and societal alignment. India, in contrast, has built trust at scale through digital infrastructure like Aadhaar, UPI, ONDC, DigiLocker, and ABDM. With the ₹10,000-crore IndiaAI Mission investing in compute, datasets, and foundation models, India’s challenge isn’t ambition - it’s translation: converting infrastructure and intent into frontier innovation and global impact.

What must India do to lead?

Turn services pedigree into a catalyst, not a constraint: India’s IT services sector - the world’s largest digital talent pool - must evolve from execution to innovation. As AI shifts from building infrastructure and foundational models to real-world applications, India’s scale, diversity, and services depth position it to pursue multiple sectoral bets, embedding AI across industries and driving global applied-AI leadership.

Build patient capital for deep tech: Breakthroughs demand patience. India’s conglomerates and financial institutions must act as national venture backers, underwriting 8 - 10-year innovation cycles rather than chasing short-term returns.

Tighten the research-to-market loop: India’s academic excellence must flow faster into startups and enterprises through translational AI labs, co-innovation clusters, and commercialization pipelines.

Create space for serendipity: Innovation emerges from chaos, not choreography. India’s next leap lies in scaling digital commons - open, interoperable platforms like UPI, ONDC, and DigiLocker - that let innovators plug in, experiment, and scale easily, lowering barriers and enabling structured serendipity that drives unplanned breakthroughs.

Shape global AI governance: India’s democratic digital model - embodied in the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (2023) - offers a “third way” between the corporate-led US and state-led China. Trust, once a byproduct, can now be India’s most valuable export.

What can Silicon Valley learn from India?

Silicon Valley’s journey has long been driven by speed and capital - but India’s experience proves that inclusion, openness, and shared infrastructure can drive innovation at scale.

Design for everyone, not just early adopters. Building for the “next billion” unlocks new business models and unexpected innovation.

Regulate for trust, not control. Privacy-by-design and public consent frameworks strengthen, not stifle, innovation.

Invest in public infrastructure to amplify private innovation. Open digital rails enable collaborative ecosystems and serendipitous discovery.

Pursue purpose-driven innovation. India’s AI trajectory links growth with societal benefit - a playbook the Valley increasingly needs.

A shared future

The next wave of AI leadership will come not from competition but co-creation. Silicon Valley brings research, capital, and risk appetite. India brings diversity, digital discipline, and purpose. Together, they can build an AI order measured not only by how fast it moves, but by how many it carries forward.

India’s services legacy, entrepreneurial depth, and openness to chaos make it uniquely suited to lead the next phase of AI - one that blends strategy with serendipity and innovation with impact.

(Vidisha Suman and Philipp Jung are Partners at Kearney.)

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