India not a refuge but 'compelling' AI opportunity: Anand Mahindra

Anand Mahindra said India's software talent, systems integration capabilities and large domestic market could give it a distinct AI opportunity, supporting renewed investor interest in Indian equities

Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra on Tuesday said India is not just a refuge from the AI hype but rather has "a compelling AI opportunity of its own".

In a post on X, Mahindra cited the nation's software talent, systems integration expertise and enormous domestic market for AI use cases, to make his point: "surely India has a promising hand to play?" "Perhaps India isn't just a refuge from the AI hype. It may have a compelling AI opportunity of its own," he wrote.

And if so, he argued, the renewed interest in Indian equities "may have more staying power than we think".

 

In his post, Mahindra said he had earlier flagged the irony of India returning to favour with global investors partly because it was seen as being outside the supposedly overheated AI trade.

"But perhaps there's another way to look at it," he said.

He pointed out that Stanford now ranks India third in global AI vibrancy.

Mahindra acknowledged that India does not make the most advanced chips or lead the race in foundational large language models. He recalled an analogy he had used in the annual report of Tech Mahindra, the IT services company of the Mahindra Group.

Smartphones created the platform, and apps unlocked their potential, he said.

Drawing on James Carville's famous line "It's the economy, stupid!", he said the AI version should be "It's the ecosystem, stupid!" The real explosion of applications, domain expertise and enterprise-wide deployment may still lie ahead, Mahindra said.