A new and extremely important report has drawn global attention to India. The report says that India is on the verge of becoming the next superpower in the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI). If India plays its cards right, it could generate $100 to $120 billion (approximately Rs 10 lakh crore) from the global AI software and services market by 2028.
This amount is so large that it represents 50% of India’s current IT services market! But are we fully prepared to seize this golden opportunity?
This report, released by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) at the Global Fintech Fest, also highlights a significant challenge that every Indian needs to know.
India’s ‘2-20 Conundrum’: This is the biggest challenge in India’s AI story. It’s being called the “2-20 conundrum.”
Understand this: Today, approximately 20% of the world’s data (the raw material for AI) is generated in India. Everything you and I do on the internet every day is data. But we have only 2% of the global capacity for “factories” (data centers) needed to process and store this data. It’s like having the world’s most fertile land for farming, but no warehouses to store and process the grain.
Data centers must be built: India must increase its share of global data center capacity from 2% to at least 8% (approximately 17 gigawatts) by 2030. This will require massive land and green energy.
AIKosh must be made a ‘knowledge base’: India must expand and improve its national data platform, ‘AIKosh’ (national data repository), to create AI models tailored to the needs of India and other developing countries.
Build AI for India: We must focus on building AI models that solve our own problems, such as health, agriculture, education, and providing banking to the poor.
Why we can win this race: Despite concerns, India has three powerful weapons to win this race.
World’s largest AI consumer market: We have millions of AI users.
The largest ‘laboratory’ for AI: No company in the world can test its AI ideas on the scale that India can.
The potential to export technology: Our IT industry is already developing and selling technology to the world. We have both the scale and the capability to implement it. The government’s ‘India AI Mission’ is a major and decisive step in this direction.
The entire world is currently going through an ‘AI supercycle’. Over $1.3 trillion has been invested in AI in the last five years, four times more than the investment in fintech.
AI is spreading so rapidly that it has reached 40% of the population in just two years, compared to the five years it took the internet to do so. It’s clear that the opportunity is huge.
India has the skills, the market, and the will. We just need to solve our ‘2020 problem’ as soon as possible.
