12 homegrown AI firms pitch foundation models, generative and healthcare AI ahead of India AI Impact Summit 2026.
BuzzBytes
New Delhi, : Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi on Thursday chaired a Roundtable with leading Indian AI start-ups at his residence at 7, Lok Kalyan Marg, ahead of the India AI Impact Summit 2026 scheduled in India next month. Twelve Indian AI start-ups that have qualified under the Foundation Model Pillar for the Summit’s ‘AI for ALL: Global Impact Challenge’ participated and presented their ideas and ongoing work.
The participating start-ups are working across a wide spectrum of frontier technologies, including Indian language foundation models and multilingual large language models; speech-to-text, text-to-audio and text-to-video systems; 3D generative AI for e‑commerce, marketing and personalised content; and engineering simulations, material research and advanced analytics for data-driven decision-making. Several firms also showcased AI solutions for healthcare diagnostics and medical research, underlining AI’s growing role in clinical support and affordable care.
Founders and CEOs at the roundtable commended India’s strong policy and regulatory push to build a vibrant AI ecosystem, noting rapid growth and vast future potential of the domestic AI sector. They observed that the global “centre of gravity” of AI innovation and deployment is beginning to shift towards India, with the country now offering a robust and enabling environment that firmly places it on the global AI map.
During the interaction, the Prime Minister highlighted the importance of artificial intelligence in driving transformation across society, governance and the economy. He said India, by hosting the India AI Impact Summit 2026, is poised to play a major role in the global technology sector and is making concerted efforts to bring about nationwide transformation by leveraging AI.
Shri Modi emphasised that start-ups and AI entrepreneurs are the co-architects of India’s future, stressing that the country has immense capacity both for cutting-edge innovation and for large-scale implementation. He said India should present a unique AI model to the world that reflects the spirit of “Made in India, Made for the World”, and urged founders to design products and platforms with global impact in mind.
The Prime Minister underlined that growing global trust in India is the country’s biggest strength in the technology arena. He called for Indian AI models that are ethical, unbiased, transparent and firmly grounded in data privacy, and urged start-ups to champion affordable AI, inclusive AI and frugal innovation that can serve both India and other developing regions.
Shri Modi also suggested that Indian AI models should be distinct in character, promoting local and indigenous content as well as India’s diverse regional languages. He said this approach would both preserve cultural richness and ensure that AI solutions remain accessible to citizens across linguistic and socio-economic segments.
The meeting was attended by CEOs, heads and senior representatives of Indian AI start-ups including Avataar, BharatGen, Fractal, Gan, Genloop, Gnani, Intellihealth, Sarvam, Shodh AI, Soket AI, Tech Mahindra and Zenteiq. Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw, and Minister of State, Shri Jitin Prasada, also joined the deliberations, reflecting the government’s high-level backing for the IndiaAI Mission and the country’s wider digital innovation agenda.
