The ​​Global IndiaAI Summit 2024, taking place in Delhi on 3rd-4th July, featured a session of experts discussing the groundwork focusing on India's infrastructure readiness for AI. The discussion focused on India's ambitious goal in AI and ensuring that infrastructure development aligns with national priorities of innovation, self-reliance, and inclusive growth.

The session had the following experts:

• Col AK Nath, Executive Director (Corporate) and C-DAC Pune, 
• Mr Thomas Zacharia, SVP, Strategic technical partnerships and public policy, AMD, 
• Mr Amlan Mohanty, Tech policy advisor in India, 
• Dr Rohini Srivathsa, Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft India & South Asia, 
• Ranganath Sadashiv, CTO, HPE,
• Mr Gaurav Aggarwal, Vice President of AI, Reliance Jio, 
• Mr Sunil Gupta, Co-founder, Managing Director & CEO, Yotta, 
• Mr Tanuj Bhojwani, Head, People + AI, 
• Mr Ranganath sadasiva, Chief Technology Officer @ Hewlett Packard Enterprise, 
• Mr. Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director, Asia South at NVIDIA, 
• Mr. Anil Nanduri, Vice President, Head of AI Acceleration Office, Intel

The government of India approved the IndiaAI mission in March 2024 with the vision of making AI in India and making AI work for India. The mission aims to make India a global leader in AI  and technologically self-reliant. The Global IndiaAI Summit is being organized to focus on the key pillars of compute capacity, foundational models, data set applications, development initiatives, future skills, startup financing, and safe and trusted AI.

The session's agenda was to take stock of where we are today regarding India's infrastructure and present a road map to prepare India for what's coming on AI.

“My 30-year experience says India’s strength is data and the large pool of talent, and this is tailoring the infrastructure. There will be an insatiable appetite for compute cycles in India.” Mr. Thomas Zacharia. He also suggested India adapt algorithms to use lower precision math formats for significant improvements in energy efficiency. 

“India should not restrict itself to what is being done in the world today. Rather, it should be used to open up the aperture to innovate in India for the rest of the world.” Said Mr. Thomas Zacharia.

He also applauded India’s AI mission for its digital public infrastructure, government support, people-centric and use case-driven AI strategy, and efforts to enable public-private partnerships and a growing tech ecosystem.

“Technological choices that India makes today are going to have a global impact,” Said Mr Zacharia.

The panel discussed how India should invest in computing infrastructure. What steps should be taken to make India an AI innovation intelligence and use case capital?

Amlan Mohanty shared India is about to invest Rs 4000 crores in getting 10000 GPUs and asked the speakers to enlighten the way forward. Mr. Vishal Dhupar said, "Just like Paris is a fashion capital, Milan is a fashion capital. India needs to be the Intelligence capital. And, if we think from that perspective, that know-how needs to be codified, and that's where we need to start." He added, “India is a culturally rich country, and our common sense and sensibility are unique. We need to codify it accordingly by investing in our Know-Hows.” 

Regarding making the most of the investment in GPUs, Mr Sambit Sahu said,  “ We shall be making those GPUs ourselves, and we can do that at much lower costs rather than buying from others.” 

“We must start working towards setting up a design and fabrication facility building computer in India, and we are thinking about a time when we can make and export the latest technology here. The indigenous server Rudra is a small start in the direction,” said Col. AK Nath.

The session concluded with a discussion in which the panellists unanimously agreed on nurturing a talent pool to realize the ambitious AI plan.