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India must build its artificial intelligence strategy across multiple fronts-consumer, business and government-and move at a pace ten or even a hundred times faster than any government has ever done before, India-born Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur Romesh Wadhwani said.If India gets its playbook right, it has the potential not just to participate in the AI revolution but to lead it, said Wadhwani, founding chairman and CEO of Symphony Technology Group and founder of Wadhwani Foundation."I've had the privilege of witnessing the evolution of AI over a 50-year span and I can tell you, this current AI revolution is truly that: a revolution," he told ET. "It's going to transform everything. It's going to change the lives of consumers, reinvent business in completely new ways, reshape government, and even redefine philanthropy and social impact. Massive changes are coming." Speaking about the three parallel tracks, Wadhwani said India "doesn't have to do a lot" on the consumer front and can simply ride on the large language models (LLMs) being developed by OpenAI, Anthropic, and others, while "Indianising" them with local content, languages and context to make them more relevant for Indian users.On the business front, the real shift must come from experimentation to execution, he said. "What I'm seeing now in the US is companies moving from small pilots to full-scale transformation," he said. "They're deploying agentic AI in a structured, process-by-process way: automating workflows, optimising operations, and using AI to drive growth, efficiency and competitive advantage." Enterprises in India must adopt a similar mindset and move fast if they want to stay globally relevant, Wadhwani said.And on the government side, he said he saw "an extraordinary opportunity to build AI-powered national platforms for social good," from healthcare and agriculture to skilling and employment. "The potential impact on job creation in India could be massive," he added.Wadhwani, one of the earliest India-born serial entrepreneurs to make it big in Silicon Valley, said the speed of AI-driven changes is mind-boggling. "Just two years ago, I used to do a 'disruptive technology review' every few months. Then, about a year ago, it became a weekly exercise. Now, I have to do it every single day. That's the kind of velocity we're talking about," he said.IT firms need to reinventOn why Indian IT companies seem to be playing catch-up in AI despite their early access to global clients, data and talent, Wadhwani said, "There was a certain amount of complacency. These are great companies that have achieved tremendous scale and success, but many assumed things would not move as fast as they have, or that their business models would not be disrupted so deeply." He warned that within two to three years, 75-90% of all coding could be done by AI agents, forcing Indian IT giants like Infosys, Wipro, and Cognizant to reinvent themselves "at lightning speed" or risk being swept aside by the tidal wave of change.At the same time, he believes trying to build its own foundational AI models like OpenAI or Anthropic would be "a losing game" for the country. "India should instead focus on the next wave of small reasoning models, compact and purpose-built systems trained on local data for government, business, and consumer use," Wadhwani said. "It will allow the country to lead in applied AI rather than chase the capital-intensive race of large language models." Wadhwani was an early mover in AI, launching Symphony AI in 2017. "I sensed around 2017 or 2018 that all the building blocks for an AI revolution were falling into place, with powerful cloud infrastructure, faster networks and breakthrough research in neural networks, and I did not want to be second or third this time, I wanted to be out in front," he said.The technology entrepreneur also runs a bevy of initiatives in India through the Wadhwani Foundation, spanning entrepreneurship, skilling, innovation, and AI for social good and government digital transformation. "AI is the backbone of everything we do," he said.The foundation's five key programmes -Wadhwani Entrepreneur Network, Skills Network, Innovation Network, Institute for AI for Social Good, and Government Digital Transformation Initiative - operate across India and 15 other countries. The foundation aims to help create 2.5 million jobs, skill 10 million students, place 6 million, and open 100 AI-focused centres of excellence, including new super hubs at IIT Kanpur and IIT Bombay, Wadhwani said.
