India's Tech Sovereignty: Amitabh Kant Urges Innovation, Not Western Colony

New Delhi, Apr 4 (PTI) India must maintain its sovereignty and not become a technological colony of the West, former Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said on Friday as he emphasised the need to innovate in a nimble, cost-effective manner.

Speaking at Startup Mahakumbh here, he cautioned against adopting Western models that could lead to loss of India's culture, identity, and civilisational strength.

"It's very important for India to maintain its sovereignty in technological advancement and leading from the front, we must not become a technological colony of either the West or of any other country in the world. We must continue to innovate in a very nimble, in a very less energy-consuming, cost-effective manner," the G20 Sherpa said.

He asserted that the country must build sovereign frontier models based on its own data sets and free of the West's inherent biases.

"We will lose our civilisational strength. And therefore, it's important that we must build on Indian data, on the data of our citizens."

Highlighting India's multilingual diversity with 22 languages and numerous dialects, he emphasised the need for AI models to be multilingual and multimodal to cater to rural populations effectively.

The race for AI dominance is wide open, Kant remarked, urging Indian startups to focus on energy-efficient AI solutions using limited hardware computing power. He cited examples like DeepSeek's open-source innovation as evidence of how nimble approaches can achieve significant breakthroughs at lower costs.

He advocated adopting the open-source approach as the way forward.

Commending India's digital public infrastructure (DPI), Kant said India has demonstrated its ability to enable fast payments, credit access, stock market participation, and insurance--all within seconds via mobile platforms. He noted that integrating AI with DPI would be a game-changer for innovation in India.

"The next big quantum jumping will take place when we integrate artificial intelligence with digital public infrastructure," Kant said.

Furthermore, he urged startups to disrupt and tap sunrise sectors like deep tech, AI, mobility, battery storage, and green hydrogen.

Kant called on young entrepreneurs to lead India's transformation through ethical corporate governance. He cited Infosys as an example which grew into a monolithic company due to its adherence to strong governance principles.

Kant advised startups to prioritise audits, financial management, and self-regulation while keeping governments at arm's length.

"As you grow and expand and become bigger and bigger...top-class corporate governance must be a very critical component of all this," Kant stressed.