Don't lose sleep over DeepSeek, says Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani

Speaking at the Carnegie Global Technology Summit 2025, Nilekani said that owing to the quick mass adoption of AI in India, developments in the technology will also be much faster

India has developed several small-scale AI models and it should now scale up rather than lose sleep over China’s DeepSeek, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani said on Friday, while asserting that the technology’s adoption will be quicker here.

 

“We should not be losing sleep because somebody has not built any AI models,” Nilekani said, adding that India has set up the Indian AI mission and has small models. “Now talks should be about scaling it up,” he said.

 

Nilekani also said the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) among masses can happen much faster in India compared to the world because of the technological sophistication that the country has been able to achieve in the last 15 years.

   

Speaking at the Carnegie Global Technology Summit 2025, Nilekani said that owing to the quick mass adoption of AI in India, the developments in the technology will also be much faster.

 

“If you look at what has been happening in India in the last 10-15 years when smartphones began, the initial use of phones was communication and entertainment and dominated by western countries. Around 2015-16, with the rise of India’s digital infrastructure with the arrival of Aadhaar, UPI (unified payments interface) and so on, India became more sophisticated,” Nilekani said.

 

Apart from the quick adoption of digital public infrastructure, the balance also moved from global technology companies to home-grown technology companies which were financed by venture capital, he said.

 

As the number of smartphone users in India grows to 900 million, these devices will be the basis for “reimagining work”, where people will discover jobs on the phone, get their credentials and benefits on the phone.

 

With the increased penetration of phones, the primary language for the devices will move from Hindi and English to every major Indian language, making the technology much more accessible.

 

The interface for mobile phones will go from typing and touch to voice and video, Nilekani said.

 

“Because of generative AI and the reasoning capability of AI, you will go from static to dynamic contextual information that is at your fingertips at the time you need it,” he said, adding that these things will lead to India becoming the AI use case capital of the world.