India should position itself as the world’s leading AI service provider and a global hub for robotics manufacturing if it is to achieve the Viksit Bharat goal, Abhishek Singh, additional secretary and CEO of the IndiaAI Mission, said today, laying out a roadmap that links artificial intelligence directly to economic growth, jobs and per capita income.

Speaking ahead of the India AI Impact Summit, Singh said India’s long-standing identity as the “tech garage” and IT services provider to the world must now evolve. “Can we become the primary country to source services for AI transformation? Can we become the prime service providers for agentic AI and, as we move into physical AI, even robotics?” he said, adding that this shift would be central to India’s development ambitions.

The summit, scheduled from February 16 to 20, is expected to draw close to 20 heads of state, nearly 60 ministers, and top global CEOs and researchers. The event will focus on a curated agenda built around three pillars—people, planet and progress—and seven thematic “chakras”, with an emphasis on how AI can drive equitable growth and social good.

Singh flagged growing pressure on India’s IT workforce as AI tools and low-cost coding bots begin to compete with entry-level engineers. “When our entry-level software engineers are competing with $20 bots, how do we position ourselves?” he asked. The answer, he said, lies in augmenting skills rather than replacing humans, and in building in-house AI capabilities instead of relying entirely on foreign platforms. He pointed to large IT firms such as TCS and Infosys, arguing that their decades of accumulated coding expertise could be used to develop proprietary coding agents.

Skill-building initiatives like the FutureSkills Prime platform, set up with Nasscom around five years ago, will become even more critical, he said, as India looks to retain its edge in AI skilling and services.

Why robotic manufacturing is the future

Beyond software, Singh made a strong case for India to invest in robotics manufacturing. While robotics is often seen as less relevant for a large labour-rich economy, he argued that global demand is set to surge. “Within the next three to five years, just like families think of owning a car, especially in the West, they may think of having an automated assistant in the form of a robot,” he said, pitching India as a potential manufacturing base for such systems.

Singh also highlighted recent Union Budget announcements, including tax exemptions to spur data centre expansion. With investments already flowing in from companies such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon, India could emerge as the data centre and inferencing capital of the world, he said, giving the country a strategic advantage in AI deployment.

The broader objective, Singh said, is to use AI as a “kinetic enabler” to lift efficiency, productivity and incomes, and to help chart a path from a $4 trillion economy to a $30 trillion one. “The summit is a milestone, not the end,” he said