India Has Talent and Data Diversity for AI Success, Bengaluru to be India's AI Hub: Prashanth Prakash AI could add hundreds of billions to India's GDP over the coming decade if adoption accelerates, underpinning coordinated public and private investment plans.
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India possesses the talent, mighty model, and vernacular data diversity for artificial intelligence (AI) to thrive in India, according to Prashant Prakash, Founding Partner, Accel, who also added that there's enough time and resources for Indian entrepreneurs to capitalise on the shift, both in agentic software and agentic workflows with AI and software.
"AI-first SaaS software is probably about a couple of years away. We also have complex regulatory use cases. In finance, which can become the top of our digital stack. In healthcare, which can, as the world goes, also be valuable. If they are developed in India, they can also be valuable," said Prakash.
According to a report named AI Startup Funding Report India - 2025, India is currently home to over 300 AI startups and has raised funding of around USD 780.5 million.
On investment and economic impact, research bodies show two linked trends: private investment is rising but concentrated, and public strategy is aiming to scale AI's economic contribution. NASSCOM's landscape report notes that funding growth for GenAI is uneven, while Stanford's AI Index reports accelerating global AI investment flows that are reshaping ecosystems and business adoption.
Separately, NITI Aayog's recent government analyses project large macro benefits from AI adoption, estimating AI could add hundreds of billions to India's GDP over the coming decade if adoption accelerates, underpinning coordinated public and private investment plans.
"The application player is where most of the investors are coming from India. Most of the venture funds are doing stuff on the open layer," said Prakash.
He also added that Bengaluru, usually called the 'IT' hub of India, is also becoming the AI-hub for India on the back of events like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's visit, a UK-based AI chip company, among others, visiting the city in the last 30 days to set up their global AI hubs out of Bengaluru.
"Since we are talking about Bangalore, I think Bangalore is already starting to become the AI hub," said Prakash.
Kris Gopalakrishnan, Chairman, Axilor Ventures, Co-Founder, Infosys Ltd, spoke exclusively to Entrepreneur India about the need for AI companies and startups in general to show ambition and "investing in research to build original, impactful products and technologies."
"You need to be able to take products, well, ideas from lab to market. We do research, which produces papers, but very few of those then translate to technology and products. Partly, that's because we don't have great success stories, examples," said Kris.
He also added that the funding is necessary. "This is called the value of depth, because the venture capital will fund once there is a market-ready product. But the lab prototype is not market-ready. You know, it's something that they put together in the lab. So, this gap is something that is now getting addressed. There is funding now available for taking products from the lab to market. And I'm hoping that this will help us create more products and technologies from India."
