India’s AI story seems to have refused to follow the known plot of how cheaply systems could be built here and, instead, began demanding how well they could be ideated and scaled in the real world. For years, the country was seen as a reliable back office for global technology firms, where software was test-run, debugged, and shipped at scale. With AI, India has broken out of that perception. It is now wiring the entire AI stack and readying it for the global market. The good-old back office has geared up to transform into the board room. The Bharat AI Startups Report 2026, published by Inc42 in collaboration with Google, described this shift as structural. While the frontier model development remains capital-intensive and globally concentrated, India is optimising for scale, efficiency, and adoption, building an AI ecosystem aligned with its economic and demographic realities. In such an environment, AI products are tested not in the confines of the labs, but in the open. “Indian startups don’t just build cheaper, they can iterate more per dollar and reach profitability sooner as build friction falls,” said the report. Are AI systems designed and scaled in India fit to swim or fated to… Read MoreInc42 Media
