Movers and shakers in India’s genAI space

Duc Tran contributed to this story.

India’s AI scene is finally heating up.

Policymakers like Ashwini Vaishnaw and Abhishek Singh are steering policies for the country’s US$1.2 billion AI mission – a plan to boost its AI startups and infrastructure. The initiative has selected four firms – Sarvam AI, Gnani.ai, Soket AI, and Gan AI – to build an indigenous AI model for the country.

Some startups have already built their own foundational models on the vernacular moat. These include Krutrim, led by Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal, and Sarvam AI, headed by Pratyush Kumar and Vivek Raghavan.

On the research side, people like Sunita Sarawagi, Mausam, and Mitesh Khapra are pushing new ideas such as making sense of unstructured real-world data, broadening accessibility by weaving AI education into various fields, and building open-source tools and datasets to close the AI language gap in India.

See also: Talent goldmine, no titans: India’s AI gap on the global map

There are also corporate leaders calling the shots at Big Tech firms. Soumith Chintala, Chaya Nayak, and Kalika Bali are heading the AI initiatives at Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft, respectively.

We have compiled a list of these generative AI movers and shakers from India across startups, corporates, academia, and the government. Whether you are tracking policy, scouting collaborators, or simply curious about the people driving India’s AI boom, this serves as a snapshot of the individuals shaping the country’s next big tech story.

The people we have included check at least one of the following boxes:

• Top AI leaders of large companies who are based in India or completed their education from India.
• Indian startup founders building interesting AI products, as well as those with global client lists.
• Executives who head a tech firm’s AI initiatives, and main remit is AI but not tech as a whole.
• Individuals who have companies incorporated in India, with the country as one of its bases.
• People who head generative AI companies rather than “traditional” AI companies.
• Academic researchers and chief scientists from public and private AI research labs.
• Government leaders shaping AI policy.

Notably, there are several founders and corporate leaders from India who have moved to the US and are now building game-changing AI products. These include Perplexity AI co-founder Aravind Srinivas and Anthropic executive Niki Parmar.

Nearly 28% of the people in our list reside in the US, which shows that India’s AI talent isn’t confined within national borders.