Exclusive | Affordablity Is Key To AI Success In India: Peak XV's Rajan Anandan

AI in India will be "won by Indian firms," Peak XV Managing Director Rajan Anandan told NDTV today, citing the growing volume of money that is being channelled into the sector. In an exclusive conversation with NDTV CEO and Editor-in-Chief Rahul Kanwal in Walk the Talk, Anandan said while the initiative started late in India, as with most things, the country catches up remarkably fast. 

The big impediment for developing AI in India was the lack of GPUs -- Graphic Processing Units that are like building blocks to train AI. 

"The criticism of AI in India has been India doesn't have pure-play publicly traded AI companies. We don't have an Nvidia, we don't have an OpenAI or an Anthropic, or for that matter, even a Google... that's the reason we've seen a lot of capital leave and going back to the US or going to Korea or Taiwan," he said.

But the picture in private sector has changed completely. At the end of 2025, India had less than 10,000 active GPUs -- which is less than any top university in the US have. It is not possible to train AI without GPUs, which are very expensive... But over the last 8-9 months, we have seen a 10-fold, almost a 10-fold increase. Over the next month or two, India will cross 100,000 active GPUs. Over the next several years, India will have another 10x growth on that," he said.

The other half of the story is that the Indian end-user does not need elaborate training tools for AI, given the work that is required. 

So when it comes to models, India is taking a very different strategy. 

Instead of the elaborate 15, 20 trillion parameter models that the US firms are building to train AGI, India is building 100 billion parameters, and they are doing it at an extremely low cost. 

"As you and everybody else in India knows, if you really want to win India, you got to be extremely affordable. It has to work. It can't be a sub-grade product, but it has to work for what it's supposed to do and it has to win. So we think India's game is going to build these smaller models," he added.

Early Days Of Deep Tech, But...

Anandan said when it comes to deep tech, it is still early days for India. But if our experience in space tech or semi-conductors are anything to go by, that situation is going to change rapidly.

"In 2015, India had only one space tech startup. Today we have 400... India is also the third country where a private sector company has got a rocket up into orbit," he said. 

As for semi-conductors, even six or seven years ago, India had a handful of semiconductor startups. "Today we have over 100 semiconductor startups on the design side," he said. 

Moreover, while 20 per cent of the global semiconductor designers are in India, they work for companies like Nvidia, Qualcomm, Intel, AMD, and so on. "And over the last several years, this top talent has started leaving to start companies," he added.

"The reality is the deep tech train has left the station (in India). It is speeding up. Clearly, when you compare deep tech to where fintech is today, where India is unquestionably the number one globally, we have some ways to go. But we feel that India today has the talent - you always have, but now they're unleashed... We have the markets, because as our markets keep getting deeper, we have a supportive government," he added.

Temple: "Unique product"

Temple, the wellness device from Deepinder Goyal's Eternal, got a huge shout-out from Anandan, who said as India's first venture-funded start-up, it is already extraordinary.

"Only country in the world that's made quick commerce work. India's most valuable venture-funded startup. And really, you know, 30 million monthly transacting users," he said, pointing out that it is very hard to build a "very, very large company".

As for Temple, calling it a "very unique product," he said it is not a medical device but a wearable "that gives you a set of health metrics, and it's up to you to decide what you want to do with it". 

"A lot of doctors are pushing back, saying these are exaggerated claims about the efficacy of the data and this is just being done to push up valuations. I completely disagree... firstly it is a closed beta right now with a few hundred users... nobody actually said it was a medical device. Nobody has to buy it if they don't like it," he added.

Even so, the interest is high in the product, he said.  

"You know, it's funny, I posted a picture with a friend of mine and wearing Temple. The most number of views we ever got... which means the attention is very high," he added.