India must build sovereign infra for artificial intelligence: Experts

The time is ripe for India to bring an ‘artificial intelligence' infrastructure on the likes of digital public infrastructure (DPI) sovereignty, where the country owns, controls and manages its foundational AI systems, opined experts at the ongoing India AI Impact Summit-2026.During a session on ‘Sovereign AI Infrastructure for Bharat and Global South’, they noted that India’s strategic AI infrastructure must be built around three core pillars -- security, sustainability and open standards.

Aligned with the objectives of Atmanirbhar Bharat and Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) compliance, the discussions explored multi-agent orchestration frameworks and cross-sector compute-exchange models that can expand access to high-performance computing for startups, academia, and public institutions.

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“Such an approach aims to democratise advanced computational resources, while strengthening India’s long-term digital sovereignty, innovation capacity and research acceleration,” said Neelakantan Venkataraman from Tata Communications.

He said shared AI infrastructure could expand global access to compute and data capabilities, helping more economies, especially developing ones, on their path to building AI capacity, while retaining meaningful control.

“At the same time, India should also work on developing its own AI infrastructure where it owns, controls, and manages its foundational AI systems,” the expert added.

Sourav Bandyopadhyay of Shunya Labs said, “Trust will be a deciding factor as legal clarity, robust data management mechanisms and technical and operational assurances will determine whether shared infrastructure creates global inclusivity or new dependencies.”

The panelists maintained that a small number of economies are pulling ahead in access to advanced chips, reliable power and high-assurance data centre capacity, with the US and China alone capturing around 65 per cent of aggregate global AI investment. They said without new infrastructure models, many economies, especially developing ones, risk missing out on the full benefits of AI. Shared infrastructure can widen access but only if it is designed with and for trust, they added.

“Advanced chips remain supply-constrained and land, water, talent and capital are unevenly distributed across regions and markets. Additionally, capital availability is increasingly being shaped by balance-sheet capacity and long-term energy commitments,” Ravinder Kumar from Tecnod8.ai added.