India is uniquely positioned to lead the next phase of global AI deployment, driven by a massive developer base, rapid enterprise adoption, and robust digital public infrastructure, according to a senior Microsoft executive.
In a blog post on Tuesday, Jay Parikh, Executive Vice President of CoreAI at Microsoft, noted that developers in India are the second-largest contributors to open source globally, with more than 7.5 million contributions to AI-specific projects.
Open-source projects built in India– such as Hyperswitch, ERPNext, ToolJet and Bruno are now being utilised by developers worldwide.
"The next phase of AI won't be defined by who builds the best models, but by who can deploy them at scale with trust, speed, and real-world impact. India is uniquely positioned for that shift, and increasingly, it's where that future is taking shape," Parikh said.
Highlighting the country's rapid enterprise adoption, Parikh cited Deloitte's 2026 enterprise AI survey, which ranks India first out of 15 countries on at-scale AI adoption.
According to the survey, 40 per cent of Indian respondents report significant or full AI use, compared to a global average of 28 per cent.
Underpinning this growth is India's digital public infrastructure.
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“Over the past decade, India has built identity, payments, and data platforms operating at population scale. UPI, India's digital payments system, now processes more than 20 billion transactions a month, roughly half of all real-time payments globally.
“As AI converges with DPI, India is moving toward what could become the world's first large-scale AI public infrastructure, where intelligent systems are embedded into everything from financial services to healthcare and education,” Parikh noted.
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