Nirmala Sitharaman said that India is not just leading in Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption but also shaping how it is governed. She was speaking at the 6th convocation of the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Kottayam. She said that the government at the centre has taken a lot of inputs from stakeholders and is continuously coming up with policies to make sure that AI gets due attention. The minister added that India recorded 3 billion AI-related app downloads in 2024, more than the US and China. She also mentioned the Microsoft Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Satya Nadella’s comment that India was the ‘use case capital of AI,’ adding that the country was not just doing research on it but also implementing it on a large scale. The Union Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister also emphasised the innovation taking place in the country, adding that India’s rank in the Global Innovation Index has improved to 39th in 2024 among 133 economies from the 81st position in 2015.
