“So, are you building ‘AI for India’ or ‘AI for Bharat’?” — the narrative around deploying AI in the country is changing rapidly. There have always been two distinct Indias within India. In the current context, we can understand them as: the urban, tech-savvy ‘India’ and the rural, first-time smartphone users of ‘Bharat’.
These two worlds have different realities, but their aspirations are the same—better opportunities through technology.
Think about it: In urban India, AI powers sophisticated services that seamlessly integrate into daily life, from fintech to smart cities. Some of the companies pioneering this revolution are Sarvam AI, TWO, SML, G42, and others.
But in rural Bharat, AI must be something more—it must be simple, intuitive, and empathetic. It’s not just about the technology, but about showing people that it cares for them. The likes of Microsoft-incubated Karya, Nextwealth, Kissan AI, among others, alongside initiatives such as AI4Bharat are bringing it to them.
At Cypher 2024, India’s biggest AI conference, Wadhwani AI CEO Shekar Sivasubramanian echoed similar views, saying that designing AI for these users requires vastly different approaches.
He said when rolling out software for farmers or daily wage earners, we must consider that they may be using the most expensive piece of equipment they’ve ever owned, and the software must be intuitive and simple to use.
“When we deployed AI solutions in rural India, we realised that the most important factor was showing people that we cared about them, and that was more valuable than any complex algorithm,” he mentioned.
According to the recent Economic Survey 2023-24, by 2030, over 40% of India’s population is expected to live in urban areas. But while the nation is urbanising at a rapid pace, the majority of them still live in rural landscapes.
Interestingly, 55% of internal migration happens between rural areas, while only 18.9% of migrants move from the countryside to cities. Meanwhile, smaller migration flows occur between urban areas (15.9%) and from urban to rural areas (10.3%).
With a vast rural community, the government aims to “transform lives and livelihoods” through socio-economic inclusion and empowerment.
However, a big question remains: With over 6,40,000 villages and 800 million people residing in rural India, how can AI’s potential be effectively harnessed to improve lives in these communities? And how are AI startups and initiatives contributing to this rural transformation?
The Story of ‘AI for Bharat’ So Far
Several startups have stepped up to bring AI for Bharat. One of them is Hesa, a platform enabling digital transactions in the region by integrating both social and digital approaches to facilitate local commerce. Similarly, Fasal is an agri-tech platform that uses AI to provide farmers with data-driven insights, helping them optimise their farming practices and improve crop yields.
CropIn is another agri-tech startup offering AI-powered analytics for farm management, aimed at boosting productivity and mitigating risks associated with crop failures.
Notably, most global tech companies look at India as ‘Bharat’. For instance, Microsoft and Google are also making significant contributions to rural development through AI. Microsoft’s Jugalbandi chatbot uses generative AI to help villagers access government services in multiple languages, enhancing digital literacy.
Moreover, Microsoft’s Women in Digital Business initiative, launched in 2022, empowers rural women entrepreneurs with AI tools and digital skills, helping over 30,000 women enhance their businesses through improved product presentations and financial management.
Google is similarly focused on rural AI adoption. Its AI Samarth initiative aims to educate five million students, parents, and teachers over the next four years, equipping them with AI literacy.
Additionally, Google has partnered with the Tamil Nadu government to establish AI Labs in Chennai, aimed at integrating AI into local startups and small enterprises. In the agricultural sector, Google is promoting its Agricultural Landscape Understanding (ALU) API in collaboration with the Telangana government, providing farmers with data-driven insights to improve their practices.
The Story of ‘AI for India’ So Far
A ‘Jio moment’ in AI was long overdue, which Mukesh Ambani finally delivered at Reliance Industries’ 47th Annual General Meeting (AGM) unveiling a series of AI initiatives. Major highlights included the introduction of Jio Brain, Jio AI-Cloud, Jio Phone Call AI, and the vision for a national AI infrastructure.
Jio also introduced an AI-powered feature designed to transcribe, summarise, and translate phone conversations in real-time.
To support these and other AI-driven initiatives, Reliance announced the establishment of gigawatt-scale AI data centres in Jamnagar, Gujarat, powered by green energy. These centres will be part of a broader plan to create AI inference facilities nationwide, ready to meet India’s growing demand for AI capabilities.
Meanwhile, Ola’s Krutrim is the first Indian AI startup to hit a billion-dollar valuation, just a month following the launch of its LLM. The company, whose name itself means “artificial” in Sanskrit, has ambitious plans, like developing data centres, servers, and supercomputers for the AI ecosystem.
Other Indian AI startups like Sarvam AI, MachineHack, and Induced AI are also working to drive AI adoption in India.
India, for the Win!
As the debate over who’s leading India’s AI race continues, Prime Minister Narendra Modi once said that AI should really stand for “American Indians”, highlighting the powerful blend of innovation and talent from both sides of the globe.
With tech giants like Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Meta unveiling new AI products and updates, the real challenge now lies in aligning these advancements with the country’s unique needs. So, addressing the country’s vast and diverse problems is key to making AI truly impactful.
One of India’s industry experts, in an exclusive conversation with AIM Media House, mentioned they are going above and beyond collaborating with governments, hospitals, and the private sector to ensure AI’s success in different sectors such as healthcare and agriculture.
So far, there seems to be no clear metric to measure the pace of AI adoption between ‘India’ (urban) and ‘Bharat’ (rural). But one thing is clear: with its large population and unique needs, rural India is a prime landscape for startups ready to grow. For businesses aiming to scale, the real opportunity lies in Bharat, where any innovation can directly transform millions of lives.
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