When the AI impact summit 2026 in India was announced, a lot of people expected it to just be another tech conference with some PowerPoint slides, some free pens and extensive talks by speakers.
When I walked into Bharat Mandapam this week, it felt more than just another tech summit. It felt exciting and nothing that India has ever seen before.
For the longest time, India had been associated with just ‘call centres’ and ‘IT services’ providers. But the AI impact summit 2026 is proof that the world is finally seeing us as something we have always been capable of. Over the past year, especially in the past few months, India has started showing up meaningfully on the global AI infrastructure map. That is a huge achievement in itself.
One thing that became very evident during these 4 days was the shift from ‘How do we use this XYZ tool built in ABC country?’ to ‘How are we building the world’s most scalable AI?’ and ‘How can we help deploy India-built AI tools globally?’
Here’s a quick overview on what actually went down and why 2026 is officially the year India stopped being an AI consumer and became an AI master builder.
The Big Launch: Sarvam’s ‘Vikram’
18th February marked the day where we moved two steps closer to the idea of Sovereign AI. Sarvam AI, the Bengaluru based startup, that has been compared with Google’s Gemini and Open AI’s ChatGPT, launched their largest language model yet, ‘Vikram.’
Vikram includes Sarvam AI’s long-awaited foundational models ‘Sarvam-30B’ and ‘Sarvam-105B.’ As reported by The business Standard, Sarvam said the model supports all 22 official Indian languages. It handles long documents with a 128,000 token context window, and uses mixture of experts architecture to improve efficiency.
This is a huge win for India. Let’s forget about ChatGPT for a second. These newly launched models were built from the ground up for the 22 official Indian languages. The tool, in its demo, was translating complex agricultural advice into a local dialect via voice and no high speed internet. It’s open-source, too, so Sarvam is basically saying, ‘Hey, let’s not wait for Silicon Valley to understand our local nuances.’
The Core Pillars: Agriculture, Healthcare, and Education
Walking through the booths of the giants like Jio, TCS, Amazon, Google etc., I could see a clear pattern. These ‘big techs’ are not fighting about ‘who has the best image generator’ out there. They have moved past this conversation way back. Now, these giants are concerned with solving problems with the help of AI in the major sectors like agriculture, education and healthcare. Almost every booth in hall 1 – 5 has a separate section for these 3 sectors, and all of them are approaching the problems and innovation here with a unique solution.
Google, Jio, TCS and the ‘Big Tech’ Face-off
Google’s setup is massive. They had separate zones for AI for learning and skilling, which included tools that would be helpful for people for upskilling and preparing for competitive exams. AI for Growth and Innovation had tools like NotebookLM, Gemini and Mitra AI bot showcasing newly launched features. Similarly, booths like AI for scientific discovery, AI for Health, AI for everyone and AI for agriculture – featured tools with new and upgraded features. Some of them which have already launched, and some that are soon to be launched.
I spent some time with the Induderma app (super cool skin diagnosis tool) and Med-Gemma (AI for health booth). But what really caught my eye was Gemini’s live speech-to-speech translation (AI for everyone booth). People were translating, face to face, without typing out any letter, and the tool captured and translated the language perfectly.
JIO
Then there is the massive Jio setup. They are going very hard on the lifestyle stuff.
- Jio Intelligent Wardrobe: A closet that has integrates with your real wardrobe and tells you what to wear based on the weather and your calendar. It will also suggest you with some clothing or footwear item that will look good with your existing closet items.
- Jio Content Creation Studio, Jio Gen ads and more: This section basically focuses on how marketing can be enhanced using AI, also focussing on the small shop owners who might not understand what AI is.
- JIO filmmaking booth: This is an interesting setup because despite using AI for the creation of movies/shows, they still focus on employing caricature artists, VO artists etc. to generate output that is no short of real.
- The JIO glasses, JIO in agriculture, JIO in translation of cricket commentary, and many more booths, all showcasing how we are transforming and adopting AI in our lifestyle.
TATA
Tata wasn’t far behind. They were showing off solar powered AI equipment focusing on sustainability. They also showcased chips that are packaged in India for the world, have come up with their own AI platform called ‘TCS AI wisdom next’ that showcased multiple LLMs for enterprise use and a really impressive ‘live clothes try on’ for shopping.
But the heart captivator here is their TCS AI tool for weavers. It basically helps traditional weavers design patterns while keeping them ‘in the loop.’ It’s tech that respects the craft, not replaces it. And that is a huge win, especially with debates about ‘AI stealing jobs in certain sectors.’
Other Global Giants
I cannot talk about the AI Impact Summit 2026 without acknowledging the global AI dominators. Amazon, OpenAI, Meta, Cisco, and Adobe – while the Made in India vibe was the heart of the event, the global giants brought the heavy duty muscle. These big names have basically become the foundational layer for everything we’re building here.
Infrastructure & Sovereign AI
You can’t run AI without the plumbing. That’s where Krypton TM comes in. Researching them, I found out the parent company is Constl (part of the Space World Group). They are basically building the high-speed nervous system connecting data centers across India so these AI models don’t lag.
Cisco is there too, partnering with Nvidia to show off their Secure AI Factory. And speaking of Nvidia, their Inception startups like Mirror Security and Netradyne (road safety AI) were showing some heavy-duty enterprise stuff.
IndiaAI
One of the most impressive parts of the summit is the massive IndiaAI pavilion. It was a look at the actual plumbing of our digital future. Booths here were showing off how India is moving from just being a consumer of foreign tech to a ‘builder’ status in cybersecurity, healthcare, crime control etc.- basically embedding AI directly into our national softwares and workflows.
A real standout for me was the Invinsense Pulse booth. For the uninitiated, this is a Made in India Cyber-Physical System (CPS) protection platform by the folks at Infopercept. With everything becoming smart and connected, protecting the actual physical infrastructure (like power grids or factories) is a nightmare.
At the booth, they were showing off three upcoming tools specifically designed to help organizations sniff out cyber threats before they do damage. Seeing an Indian company tackle CPS protection, which is usually dominated by global giants, was a huge ‘proudly Indian’ moment for me.
Cultural Preservation and Future Frontiers
Perhaps the most poetic use of technology I encountered was Gyanbharatam. In today’s world, where everyone is obsessed with the future, this GyanBharatam uses AI to turn ancient Indian manuscripts into living, searchable digital knowledge. It’s a testament to the Sovereign AI mission.
Further down the hall, The ePlane Co was a crowd favorite. They were showcasing their progress in bringing autonomous air deliveries to Indian cities.
Meanwhile, Zoho and Mastercard demonstrated how they are securing the backbone of the economy, with Zoho emphasizing privacy first, home grown solutions and Mastercard integrating LLMs to detect and prevent payment fraud in real time.
The Soul Of The Summit
If Halls 1-5 were the corporate giants, Hall 6 was the soul of the summit. Because this is where the startups and universities live.
There are multiple booths here, for Indian startups that are building AI tools and services in the employment sector, lifestyle, marketing, even jewellery!
One of them was Soul Era (Soul AI), which is an AI-Powered Graphology to Discover The Real self of a person. They also had a graphologist on their booth who verified the data in real time.
Then there was ideajewellery.com. This one was pretty interesting. If you ever wanted to design your own real gold jewelry, or have an inspiration, you just describe it to their AI, and it generates a 3D render that you can actually order. It’s pretty wild.
I also sat down with the team at Vivamama, a startup founded by Dweepesh Ghosh and Harsha Tomar. They’ve built an AI-powered platform for postpartum care. It’s basically a 24/7 digital health companion for new moms, filling a huge gap in the fourth trimester.
Why This Matters
The AI Impact Summit 2026 India is a demonstration of a shift. We’re seeing:
- Air Deliveries: The ePlane Co showed they are ready for the skies.
- Fintech Security: Mastercard is now using LLMs to make sure your payments are safer than ever.
- Privacy First: Zoho is leading the charge on “Sovereign Digital Infrastructure” that doesn’t sell your data.
And many many many more tools and concepts that I possibly cannot talk about in one sitting. By the time I left Hall 6, my brain was fried, but I was deeply inspired.
We aren’t just consumers of the ‘next big thing’ anymore. We are the ones building the tools that the rest of the world will eventually look to for efficiency and scale.
If you missed the summit this year, you missed the moment India’s AI scene grew up. Don’t worry though, the impact is just starting to hit the ground.
