Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran Advocates For India To Build Its Own AI Stack

Chandrasekaran stressed the importance of building strong AI research capabilities within the country to establish the knowledge base necessary for advanced applications

The Tata Sons chairman stressed India’s unique advantages in developing such an AI stack

Source : TCS

Tata Sons and Tata Group Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran has called for the development of an "India AI stack" to harness the benefits of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. Speaking at the Mumbai Tech Week, Chandrasekaran outlined a blueprint for this AI stack, stressing that it should be built on four key pillars.

The first pillar is the foundational layer, which would provide the core computing infrastructure and data repositories that AI systems can utilise. Ensuring secure access to vast amounts of Indian data, he noted, will be crucial.

“We should use Gen AI and the India stack and the platforms that we build to have a separate track to focus on creating millions of other products, not necessarily in AI and tech, but in the application of AI for every industry,” Chandrasekaran said on Friday at the Jio Convention Centre in Mumbai.

The second pillar is the basic research layer. Chandrasekaran stressed the importance of building strong AI research capabilities within the country to establish the knowledge base necessary for advanced applications.

Thirdly, the capability layer. Building on the foundational infrastructure, this layer would focus on developing the tools, models, and developer kits needed to create robust AI-powered solutions. 

'India AI mission'

Finally, the governance layer. This layer would set the policies and regulations to ensure that AI is deployed in line with Indian values and priorities. “Our government has made the right steps by creating the India AI mission… and many schemes that are coming in place, but I think it's so important to realise what we need in how to build a sovereign AI capability,” Chandrasekaran explained.

The Tata Sons chairman stressed India’s unique advantages in developing such an AI stack—its vast data resources, successful digital public platforms, a mindset for frugal innovation, and the enormous potential to address critical challenges in sectors like healthcare, education, agriculture, and governance.

He also stressed that AI is an urgent priority. Cautioning that the countries leading in AI will not just export AI, but will also become the future global leaders, he said, “Sovereign AI is very important. If we don't develop sovereign AI capabilities, we have a major risk of having all our activities.”