India’s strength’s been using technology for masses, AI can help achieve 8 pc growth: Nilekani

NEW DELHI: Nandan Nilekani, co-founder and chairman of IT services major Infosys, has suggested that for India to achieve 8 per cent growth, it has to use AI tools to take things to people. “India’s strength has been how to apply technology at population scale”, Nilekani said, speaking at the Raisina Dialogue.

Now, he said India should have to do it on a scale, low cost, and accessible. “We have to do the same with AI and allow people to use AI for education, for health, for language”, Nilekani said. The Raisina Dialogue is India’s premier conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics committed to addressing the most challenging issues facing the global community.

Every year, leaders in politics, business, media, and civil society converge in New Delhi to discuss the state of the world and explore opportunities for cooperation on a wide range of contemporary matters. The conference is hosted by the Observer Research Foundation in partnership with the Ministry of External Affairs.

.@NandanNilekani: #India currently has 150,000 startups, projected to reach 1 million by 2035—an #entrepreneurial transformation few countries have seen at this scale. With the world’s largest #GenZ population, harnessing this untapped potential is key.#Raisina2025… pic.twitter.com/ccm4TG8CgH

— Raisina Dialogue (@raisinadialogue) March 17, 2025

Coming back to Nilekani, he suggested that Indian firms must use their own data to get access to credit, which is called the account aggregator scheme.

“Today, only about 10 per cent of personal loans in India are using this system,” he said. “We can dramatically change this — that will again democratize financial services. And then, very importantly, 50 per cent of Indian assets are in land, and land is not fungible, land is not tradable, and they are not able to take that asset and do something with it. And with the advent of technologies like tokenization using public chains, we can make land fungible so people can sell their land or give their land as collateral and get credit,” he noted.

He said unlocking the wealth of Indians can get access to money, bringing in another cycle of change, the Indian technology leader said. Asserting that most of the actions today happen in the top cities, he said it is time we spread this entrepreneurship spirit across the country.

He also called for more formalisation of the Indian economy. “We have a long way to go in terms of formalizing our people,” he said, advocating for more deregulation of businesses.

He suggested simplifying things, removing and reducing compliances, decriminalizing laws, and making the language simple. “Very basic things you have to do to make turbocharged formalization. So I believe that the economy already has the capacity to grow at 6 per cent, and a few sets of reforms, I believe, can take it to even 8 per cent,” he said.

He said India has all that is needed to grow, referring to its improved roads, airports, ports, and other infrastructure projects. During his speech, he also highlighted growth in telecom and fintech, touching millions of lives living in the remotest parts of the country. (ANI)