India’s journey to 2047: Powered by AI and led by people
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Some of my earliest leadership lessons came during a posting in Kharagpur. My boss was 130 km away in Burdwan. There were no mobile phones, and decisions could not always wait.
You learnt to listen and take responsibility.
Technology now places more information in our hands in seconds than we once accessed in days. Yet technology expands our choices; people provide judgment and direction.
Every Independence Day, we celebrate how far India has travelled and look confidently towards the nation we are building. Artificial intelligence and agentic AI can help businesses grow, enable people to work creatively and improve services at scale. But India’s greatest advantage is not an algorithm. It is the ambition of our youth, the ingenuity of our entrepreneurs, and the determination of millions to make tomorrow better.
A generation with access—and a voice
The India of today is markedly different from the India of 20 years ago.
Young Indians have access to more information, ideas and opportunities to express themselves. Young people do not want to watch India’s progress from the sidelines. They want a place at the table. As of March 2025, India had 969.10 million internet subscriptions, including 407.69 million in rural areas. Behind those numbers are a student learning beyond the classroom, an entrepreneur finding customers elsewhere, and a first-generation learner gaining a skill that can transform a family’s future.
More than 50.42 lakh young people from all 28 states and eight Union Territories participated in the Viksit Bharat Young Leaders’ Dialogue 2026 Quiz. It is young India saying: we are ready to contribute.
India knows how to make technology its own
Consider a familiar scene. A customer finishes a cup of tea at a roadside stall. The shopkeeper points to a QR code. A sound confirms payment.
Neither person calls it digital transformation. It is simply a convenient way to get something done.
UPI processed 24,161.69 crore transactions in FY26, compared with 2 crore in FY17. Its success shows what happens when innovation is useful, accessible, and trusted. Indians do not merely adopt such technology; they make it their own.
AI must pass the same test. Adoption begins when an employee says, “This helps me do my job better,” or a customer says, “This made my experience easier.”
Our Agentic Workplace Study found that surveyed workers in India were 45% more likely than the global average to say AI was part of their core workflow. They want AI grounded in business context, connected to trusted data, and supported by training.
The message for leaders is clear: AI transformation is a people programme enabled by technology. Employees must be invited into the journey, given room to experiment and supported through learning.
The next breakthrough can come from anywhere
India’s innovation story is no longer confined to a few metros. The startup ecosystem has expanded to approximately 2.3 lakh ventures, with more than half emerging from Tier II and Tier III cities.
Consider Kolkata—Calcutta to many of us—a city with a proud tradition of commerce, culture, and institution-building. That legacy is being carried forward by entrepreneurs and technologists. The Startup India Nine-Year Factbook identifies Howrah and North 24 Parganas among the eastern region’s leading Tier II and Tier III startup districts, and Kolkata among its leading districts for women-led start-ups.
Picture a family-run business in Kolkata. One generation understands the market through decades of instinct and relationships. The next arrives with customer data and an AI tool. The opportunity is to bring them together—to let data strengthen instinct and experience give data context.
That possibility stretches across India. A business in Visakhapatnam can understand demand. A textile enterprise in Surat can plan inventory. A manufacturer in Coimbatore can anticipate maintenance. A logistics company in Guwahati can respond faster. An artisan in Jaipur can reach global markets. The Economic Survey 2025–26 points to AI-assisted oral-cancer screening in eastern India, AI-enabled water management in Bengaluru, and agricultural networks that have improved market access and logistics for 1.8 million farmers across 12 states.
These applications can mean an illness detected earlier, water conserved, a farmer finding a better market or a business making a better decision.
This is India’s AI opportunity: technology applied with purpose to problems that matter.
Technology should give people more agency
After more than four decades in banking, I moved into enterprise technology. It was a new language, a different industry and a much faster pace of change. That transition reinforced a belief I have carried
throughout my career: reinvention is not confined to the young, and learning does not stop when we reach a certain age or designation.
At every stage of life, we must be willing to become students again.
At Salesforce, we see the emergence of the Agentic Enterprise, where people, trusted data, applications and AI agents work together. Used thoughtfully, AI agents can simplify repetitive tasks, connect fragmented information and give people back something increasingly valuable: time. Time to serve customers, develop ideas, solve complex problems and build stronger human relationships.
But the true promise of AI becomes visible only when we allow ourselves to imagine what it could make possible.
Imagine every village entrepreneur having an AI assistant that can help understand customer demand, manage inventory, access credit and communicate with markets in a familiar language.
Imagine every student, regardless of postcode or family income, learning with the support of a personalised digital tutor—one that adapts to the learner’s pace, explains a difficult idea in different ways and helps a teacher identify where additional attention is needed.
Imagine a doctor in a district hospital supported by AI that can bring together patient information, flag potential risks and assist with early screening—allowing medical professionals to reach more people while retaining responsibility for every important decision.
Imagine a farmer receiving timely, localised information on weather, crop health and market prices. Imagine an artisan in Jaipur or a small manufacturer in Coimbatore understanding overseas demand and competing for global customers without first having to become a large enterprise.
These are not simply technology scenarios. They are possibilities for greater human agency.
AI can help an individual reimagine what is achievable. It can give a small business access to capabilities once available only to a large corporation. We have the scale of our digital infrastructure, the energy of one of the world’s youngest populations, the resourcefulness of our entrepreneurs and the diversity of problems that demand practical innovation.
Capability creates confidence
People do not resist learning because they lack ability. Often, they hesitate because they are unsure whether they can succeed in a changing role. That is why skilling must build confidence as well as competence.
A student may discover a career that did not exist a few years ago. A professional may gain the confidence to remain relevant in a changing industry. A woman returning to the workforce may find a new pathway to opportunity. An entrepreneur may turn a local idea into a global product. A family may see an entirely new horizon for the next generation.
The purpose of skilling is not merely to teach people how to operate a new tool. It is to help them imagine what they can become with it.
That is the larger opportunity before India: to ensure that AI does not remain concentrated in a few companies, campuses or cities, but becomes a force multiplier for individual aspiration.
When technology gives people more agency, learning gives them confidence and imagination gives them direction, the possibilities for India are extraordinary.
An Independence Day pledge for India
This Independence Day, let us pledge:
We will bring AI into every classroom, every business, every public service—because the countries that democratise access will define the next era of growth, and India has both the scale and the will to lead.
We will prove that scale and responsibility are not opposites—that the most impactful use of AI is also the most ethical, and that trust is the foundation every innovation must be built on.
We will not just participate in the global AI story—we will help write it—not for the few, but for the greatest number of people possible. That is India’s moment. That is our pledge.
By 2047, success should be measured not only by the intelligent systems we deploy, but by how many people gain greater agency—the ability to learn, create, participate, earn, and lead.
With the voice of our youth, the wisdom of our institutions and responsible technology, India can bring together ambition and inclusion, speed and trust, innovation and humanity.
India will not simply participate in the age of AI. India will lead it with confidence, shape it with purpose and use it to create progress for its people and the world.
(The author is president and CEO, Salesforce – South Asia. Views are personal.)