PM Modi chairs roundtable with AI startups ahead of February summit

Prime Minister Narendra Modi headed a roundtable with Artificial Intelligence startups and firms in Delhi on Thursday (January 8, 2026), ahead of the India AI Impact Summit in February.

The dozen firms Mr. Modi met, which included Tech Mahindra and Sarvam AI, were the qualified firms in the “AI for ALL: Global Impact Challenge”. The submissions were invited last year for startups that could “enable large-scale impact” across agriculture, education, healthcare, climate and finance.

Twenty selected teams, according to the challenge’s call for applications, will be able to demo their work at the February summit, which the government has said would have upwards of 1 lakh attendees, with heads of state from France (which hosted the previous AI Action Summit) and other countries visiting. 

Mr. Modi “highlighted the importance of artificial intelligence in bringing about transformation in society,” a statement by the Prime Minister’s Office said.

“He noted that India will host the India AI Impact Summit next month, through which the country will play a major role in the technology sector. He highlighted that India is making efforts to bring about a transformation with and leveraging AI.”

IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of State for IT Jitin Prasada, and IT Secretary S. Krishnan were also at the roundtable.

“These startups are working in a diverse set of areas including Indian language foundation models, multilingual large language models, speech-to-text, text-to-audio and text-to-video; 3D content using generative AI for e-commerce, marketing, and personalized content creation; engineering simulations, material research and advanced analytics for data-driven decision-making across industries; healthcare diagnostics and medical research, among others.”

Mr. Modi also said that there was a “need to ensure that Indian AI models are ethical, unbiased, transparent, and based on data privacy principles,” the PMO said. The other firms that were present at the roundtable were Avataar, BharatGen (a fully government funded project under the Department of Science and Technology), Fractal, Gan, Genloop, Gnani, Intellihealth, Shodh AI, Soket AI, and Zenteiq.