00:00Indian messenger apps,
00:02Indian social networks,
00:04Indian platforms for everyday services.
00:07For years, New Delhi has pushed homegrown alternatives to foreign tech giants.
00:12The slogan is Self-Reliant India or
00:15Admanibar Bharat in Hindi.
00:20The aim is simple.
00:22Rely less on US and Chinese tech companies.
00:27That thinking also shaped a major decision in June 2020.
00:32India banned TikTok along with 58 other Chinese apps
00:35after border clashes with China.
00:38The official line was that TikTok was a national security risk.
00:42It was definitely a strategic decision at that point of time.
00:46You know, the clashes became the trigger for it.
00:48The rationale which was given was about the lack of data protection
00:51and safeguard standards in the use of information by these apps.
00:56But realistically, that's a justification that can be used for many Indian apps as well.
01:02Homegrown alternatives like Moj and Josh quickly filled the gap,
01:05especially with regional language content and creators who left TikTok.
01:09But the advantage didn't last.
01:11New foreign competitors entered the market.
01:14Instagram rolled out Reels.
01:16YouTube launched Shorts.
01:18US platforms offered reach in audiences Indian rivals struggled to match.
01:24Now India is making a similar push in artificial intelligence,
01:28trying to shape it on its own terms.
01:34At international conferences, on the global stage,
01:37it presents itself as the voice of the global south.
01:41Their message?
01:42AR rules shouldn't be written only in Washington, Brussels or Silicon Valley.
01:49India warns against power being concentrated in their few hands
01:53and argues for wider access and technical sovereignty.
01:57There are certain principles, you know, which are standard,
02:01which are fairness, non-bias, privacy, etc.,
02:04which need to be respected.
02:06But how you implement those principles,
02:08the idea seems to be largely to leave it to the people deploying
02:11and not to kind of, you know,
02:14stifle innovation with excessive regulation.
02:19There's a challenge though.
02:21Much of India's AI still depends on foreign tech.
02:25The most advanced chips come from NVIDIA, a US company.
02:29Cloud infrastructure is dominated by companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
02:35And today's leading AI models are largely built in the US and China.
02:40But India wants to change that by developing its own systems,
02:43also to better reflect the country's linguistic diversity.
02:47The big focus in India has been around language,
02:51the diversity of language.
02:52So how do you attune large language models to contexts where it looks beyond English, right?
02:59So looking at the Indic languages, Hindi, of course,
03:01but then beyond that, all the other Indian languages.
03:04And a lot of government support and development in India is happening around that.
03:08I'm a globalist in India.
03:09I'll play a role in India,
03:10So where did it lie to India?
03:10You know, I think it's not quite a good idea.
03:11You cannot think it's quite a good idea.
03:11The other hand is all the place around here.
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