Breaking myths about India’s AI capabilities

During his visit to India last June, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declared it “totally hopeless to compete with us on training foundation models,” bluntly advising Indian engineers not to try to compete with Silicon Valley. Nandan Nilekani has emphasised focusing on simpler efforts like computing infrastructure and AI cloud services to support long-term progress. NR Narayana Murthy expressed doubt about India’s current capability to build a large language model (LLM), stating that the lack of large databases and a structured problem-solving mindset are critical obstacles.

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They are all underestimating India’s capabilities — as I have seen firsthand.

Consider Tech Mahindra’s Project Indus. CP Gurnani, who was the company’s CEO, turned Altman’s scepticism into a challenge. With less than $5 million, Tech Mahindra developed an Indian LLM capable of understanding and generating content in 40 local languages and dialects. Project Indus didn’t rely on brute financial force like Silicon Valley’s behemoth models. Instead, it embraced frugal innovation to address a critical gap in AI — language accessibility for the billion-plus Indians who speak diverse tongues.

Gurnani’s success exposed the flaws in assumptions held by Altman and others. Building LLMs isn’t about throwing vast sums of money at the problem — it’s about focus, ingenuity, and leveraging local expertise. India’s track record of achieving the improbable — whether it’s the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro)’s low-cost Mars mission or Jio’s telecom revolution — proves that innovation thrives in constraint, not excess.

Arvind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity AI, shares this belief and has put his money where his mouth is. He pledged millions from his funds to catalyse the development of indigenous AI technologies in India. Having built one of Silicon Valley’s leading AI companies and successfully taken on tech giants, Srinivas understands what it takes to lead in the fiercely competitive AI space. He likened India’s potential in AI to Isro’s achievements in space exploration, arguing that with the right focus and determination, India could achieve similar milestones in artificial intelligence.

I have heard the chorus of naysayers before, back in Silicon Valley, where I live. When I decided to move the R&D for my company Vionix Biosciences to India, the scepticism was deafening and disheartening. People claimed India lacked the innovative skills or AI expertise to achieve breakthroughs in medical diagnostics. Sand Hill Road VCs literally ridiculed me and refused to fund me, unwilling to believe that innovation could thrive outside their insulated ecosystem. They pointed to the spectacular failure of Theranos, which burned through over $1 billion trying to solve similar problems, and told me it was impossible to succeed with a fraction of that budget, especially in “backward” India.

But I wasn’t interested in the limits they highlighted. I was interested in the possibilities — and was willing to invest my retirement savings in these. And India delivered.

Thanks to the exceptional expertise of engineers at IIT Madras and the dedicated collaboration of brilliant scientists at AIIMS, we developed a diagnostic platform that Silicon Valley had dismissed as impossible. This platform harnesses non-thermal plasma-based ionisation and AI to achieve unparalleled speed, accuracy, and affordability in analysing organic and elemental matter. Unlike traditional mass spectrometers — the gold standard in such analysis — it eliminates the need for costly consumables and controlled environments, making it an affordable and transformative solution.

Initially, my vision was to create a platform for affordable medical diagnostics. However, the groundbreaking technology developed by Indian engineers has applications far beyond healthcare. I am now repurposing the first version of this technology to tackle India’s water toxicity crisis, starting with the Yamuna River and then expanding to the rest of India — and eventually, the world.

For less than $2 million, we developed a solution with the potential to disrupt multiple industries and challenge Silicon Valley’s dominance.

Silicon Valley’s dismissiveness stems from an outdated view of innovation — one that equates success with money, infrastructure, and the Western model of technological dominance. The reality is that true innovation thrives where constraints exist. India’s challenges — limited resources, linguistic diversity, and infrastructure gaps — aren’t weaknesses. They are the catalysts that fuel its ingenuity.

The sceptics still cling to tired assumptions, ignoring India’s growing capabilities. They overlook the groundbreaking work of its academic institutions, the ingenuity of its engineers, and the ability to craft solutions tailored to local and global challenges. India doesn’t need Silicon Valley’s playbook. It has the creativity, vision, and talent to write its own story of innovation — one the world can no longer afford to ignore.

This isn’t the first time India has been underestimated. Decades ago, critics doubted Isro’s ability to launch satellites on a shoestring budget. The Mars Orbiter Mission silenced them. Today, the same scepticism surrounds India’s potential in AI.

Yes, India must focus on foundational priorities, as Nilekani suggests, but building state-of-the-art LLMs is not just within its reach — it’s inevitable. While Murthy’s concerns about infrastructure and problem-solving are valid, they underestimate India’s ability to overcome barriers through ingenuity and collaboration. The question isn’t if India will do it but how soon it will exceed expectations. The sceptics will, once again, be proven wrong. Wait and see.

Vivek Wadhwa is CEO, Vionix Biosciences. The views expressed are personal

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