Global South Will Benefit From India’s AI Models: MeitY Secy

Electronics and IT Secretary S Krishnan has reportedly said that the Indian government is open to sharing its artificial intelligence (AI) models with the Global South.

For context, Global South refers to developing countries located in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. 

As per news agency ANI, Krishnan asserted that the country is positioning itself as a key partner for the Global South as many existing AI systems cater primarily to Anglophone or resource-rich markets.

He also said that India has the potential to lead the global AI development due to India’s diverse “language technology ecosystem”.

“If you can do it in India, you can do it practically anywhere else in the world,” Krishnan reportedly said while emphasising that the nation’s linguistic diversity could serve as a proving ground for AI models. 

He made the comments while addressing industry body FICCI’s Bhashantara 2025 conference.

The comments follow discussions between Indian authorities and United Nations (UN) officials. The latter is said to have expressed interest in the country’s “collaborative approach” to AI development. As per the report, India is positioning itself as a potential alternative to other AI ecosystems by offering solutions designed for multilingual and resource-constrained environments.

This comes at a time when the Centre has pushed the pedal of fostering AI development and adoption in the country. The MeitY Secretary said that state-backed initiatives such as Bhashini and Anuvadini are working on capturing data related to regional dialects as well as major languages.

Meanwhile, the government’s flagship IndiaAI Mission aims to collaborate with the private sector, especially startups, to spur AI development. A central pillar of this mission is the AI Kosh portal, a repository with over 400 datasets focused on Indian languages and contexts. 

Not just the government, startups are also driving innovation by building AI models in Indic languages. For instance, Sarvam AI is developing a large language model (LLM) that supports 11 languages. 

Other players like Bhavish Aggarwal’s Ola Krutrim and CoRover are also advancing efforts by building smaller language models focused on Indic languages.

However, the global AI landscape continues to be dominated by models like OpenAI’s GPT-4, Meta’s Llama and Google’s Gemini. Nevertheless, homegrown startups are looking to cash in on the burgeoning Indian GenAI market, which is projected to become a $17 Bn opportunity by 2030.