The September 2025 edition of AIM Print captures India’s fast-evolving AI journey, spotlighting the people, companies, and paradoxes shaping technology and its future. From Google’s partnerships to homegrown innovators like NxtGen and Bhasha, and from government ambitions under the IndiaAI Mission to the growing influence of open source, this issue is a sweeping view of ambition, risk, and resilience.
Google Gives India’s AI Mission Wings
Google is doubling down on India’s AI ecosystem by working with startups like Sarvam AI, Soket AI, and Gnani.ai. At Google I/O India, Manish Gupta (Google DeepMind) announced that these firms are building on Gemma models to create Indic-language solutions. Sarvam Translate, developed by Vivek Raghavan, supports 22 Indian languages, while Soket AI’s Abhishek Upperwal is building agriculture-specific AI. Other partners include CoRover, Glance, Entri, Invideo, Nykaa, Dashverse, and Toonsutra .
Building India’s NxtGen
The cover story chronicles AS Rajgopal, CEO of NxtGen Cloud Technologies, and his bold bet on AI sovereignty. Pivoting from data centers to cloud and now full-stack AI services, NxtGen is supplying GPUs under the IndiaAI Mission alongside Jio Platforms, Locuz, E2E Networks, CtrlS, CMS, Orient Technologies, Tata Communications, Vensysco, and Yotta.
Rajgopal emphasizes sovereignty and risk management, while his son Abhisyant A leads AI products, launching M, an open-source agentic AI platform built in India. With over 40 enterprise AI use cases in production, NxtGen is also experimenting with nuclear-powered data centers to handle rising compute demands .
India’s AI Paradox
Senior editor Prabhu M highlights the contradictions of India’s AI journey. While the IndiaAI Mission aims to reduce dependence on US and Chinese models, reliance on foreign GPUs remains a vulnerability. Voices like Balaraman Ravindran (IIT Madras, Wadhwani School of AI) and Deepinder Goyal (Eternal) underscore the urgency of sovereign semiconductor manufacturing amid US export controls .
Bhasha Puts Indian Languages First
In Agartala, Bishal Saha is building Bhasha, an indie AI-driven language app powered by Bhashini datasets. Unlike Duolingo, which supports only a handful of Indian languages, Bhasha already covers over a dozen, including Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Odia, Manipuri, and Sanskrit. With 25,000 users, most of the app’s code and courses are AI-generated using Claude and ChatGPT, making it a true grassroots innovation .
India’s Big Open Source Hack
Arpit Joshipura (Linux Foundation India) calls for Indian IT to move from consuming to contributing to open source. Infosys became the first major IT firm to donate a project to the Linux Foundation, while companies like IBM, Red Hat, Microsoft, Ericsson, Nokia, and Cisco are also building open-source capabilities from their Indian R&D centers. Joshipura projects India could be the world’s top contributor to open source by 2030 .
India Needs More IITs than AI Startups
Balaraman Ravindran stresses that India’s research capacity lags despite the IndiaAI Mission’s ₹10,000-crore funding. While IIT Madras received ₹584 crore in 2023-24, this pales against China’s Tsinghua University or the US’s MIT. Ravindran argues that India must expand world-class institutions if it wants to compete globally in AI .
AI Reaches Tier 2 Cities
Jitin Prasada, Minister of State for Electronics and IT, announced 20+ AI labs under the IndiaAI Mission in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, with a target of 570 labs by 2027. This rollout—though criticized for leaving out several southern states—aims to train 1.5 lakh students and democratize AI literacy. Voices like Ankita Vashistha (Arise Ventures) and Anand Fernandes (EG India) stress the importance of expanding infrastructure and investment beyond metros .
Global Perspectives
The issue also explores:
- Meta’s hiring spree of Chinese AI talent and what it means for global competition.
- Cloudflare’s entry into AI infrastructure, promising stability amid compute chaos.
- Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani’s view on GCCs as “critical clients,” as India crosses 1,600+ GCCs with 120 new centers in 2024 .
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