AI Must Deliver Practical Benefits for Ordinary Indians: Ambassador Vinay Kwatra

India’s Ambassador to the United States, Vinay Kwatra, has said artificial intelligence will gain scale in India only if it delivers practical benefits to ordinary people and businesses, cautioning technology leaders against assuming that American models can simply be replicated. Addressing the Ideas4India forum in Seattle, Kwatra said India’s approach to technology had to be understood through its development needs. Much of the population would engage with AI as users, with adoption shaped by the results it produced.

“I can tell you what works in Bay Area and Seattle will not work in India,” he said. Kwatra spoke after technology executives raised questions about India’s AI capabilities, talent, infrastructure and role in creating new technology. He urged them to consider the circumstances in which people would actually use it. He illustrated the point with a small grocery owner. Such a business, he said, would pay Rs 300 a month for intelligence only if it delivered a useful outcome.

“So I think all questions on AI get answered on outcome at the level of society,” he said. The ambassador cited digital public infrastructure as an example of technology finding acceptance because it produced results people could use. India was receptive to technology in that sense, he said. He also challenged a narrow distinction between producing and consuming technology. What counted as creation differed according to a person’s level of development and immediate needs.

“So when I'm struggling for my food, then food security is my creation,” Kwatra said. The remarks by the ambassador placed practical demand alongside the debate over advanced AI models and computing capacity. He said deployment would depend on the level society could absorb and the infrastructure available to support it. “AI will get positioned in India in all three layers, but at a scale and at the level which society can absorb and infrastructure can support,” he said. Kwatra argued that financing also depended on the usefulness of the technology. Developing AI capabilities required money, which would follow when the use of those capabilities produced an outcome.

“Money will come only if there is an outcome associated with that inference,” he said. He identified separate responsibilities for government and business. Decisions about sovereign models, the organisation of data and whether that data should be available for training models globally were among the questions authorities would have to consider. The corporate sector also had a role, he said, responding to a question about India’s development of large language models.

That question should be put to Indian companies as well as government. Kwatra also thanked Indian-origin technology leaders for their contribution to India’s development and international standing. Their achievements in the United States mattered to how India was perceived, even where the connection was not immediately tangible. Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, the forum’s guest of honour, similarly emphasised broad access. He recalled a demonstration in India in which an AI-enabled service helped a farmer seek information about a government scheme through WhatsApp.

The September 17 gathering was convened by the Consulate General of India in Seattle as a follow-up to the India AI Impact Summit 2026. More than 40 Indian-origin chief executives and chief technology officers attended. The consulate said Kwatra reaffirmed an AI mission based on inclusivity, openness, sovereignty, democratised access, safety and trust. Several participating companies have substantial engineering, research and business operations in India, according to the organisers. The consulate cited Microsoft’s announced $17.5 billion investment during 2026–2029 and Amazon’s announced $48 billion investment during 2026–2030 as examples of the wider commercial relationship supporting India-US technology cooperation.

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