The India International Science Festival (IISF) 2025, held from December 6-9 at Panchkula (Haryana), emerged as one of the most impactful science events of the year, inspiring young minds and strengthening India’s pursuit of Viksit Bharat@2047. During the event on Dec 8, a high-powered panel discussion titled “AI & AGI: The Future of Intelligence” brought leading voices from academia, industry, and research together to explore how the evolution from Artificial Intelligence to Artificial General Intelligence will shape the future of science, innovation, and humanity.
The session featured key speakers including Prof. Rajeev Ahuja, Director, IIT Ropar; Gopal Krishna Bhatt, Director – Data Centre Customer Engineering, Intel; Vivek Kumar Rai, Head – Strategic Business, HPC & AI, NVIDIA; and Pratyus Kumar, Co-founder, Sarvam AI.
Addressing school students, Prof. Rajeev Ahuja, Director, IIT Ropar, said India is preparing to become a global AI leader by 2035, powered by young talent and the country’s data-rich ecosystem. He underscored that the IndiaAI Mission, announced by the Prime Minister, is designed to train one crore youth in AI, build national compute infrastructure, develop indigenous AI models, and promote responsible and ethical AI.
He noted that IIT Ropar hosts one of India’s three national Sectoral AI Centres of Excellence—focused on agriculture—as part of the Ministry of Education’s initiative to deploy AI solutions in priority sectors such as digital health, smart cities, and agritech.
Prof. Ahuja explained that India’s strength in manpower, data, and scientific curiosity positions the country to become a global hub of semiconductor manufacturing—an essential pillar of the PM’s vision for technological self-reliance and Viksit Bharat.
Gopal Krishna Bhatt, Director – Data Center Customer Engineering, Intel, described how India is rapidly advancing in server design, chip development, and high-performance computing hardware. He cited ongoing collaborations—such as Intel’s partnership with CDAC on the ‘Rudra’ server platform—as examples of how India is transitioning from chip import dependence to indigenous system design and manufacturing.
He noted that dozens of India-based server and data-center hardware designs are currently underway, reflecting the momentum created by the Government’s semiconductor and digital infrastructure push. He encouraged students to remain curious—emphasizing that curiosity is the foundation of innovation.
Vivek Kumar Rai, Head – HPC & AI, NVIDIA, highlighted how AI is transforming scientific discovery, including drug development, climate modelling, material science, and automotive design.
He explained how GPU-based computing is accelerating national missions—from weather prediction to supercomputing infrastructure—where NVIDIA works closely with Indian research institutions and ministries.
He noted that AI is breaking linguistic barriers and supporting India’s diverse population—aligning with the Prime Minister’s vision of technology as a democratizing force that benefits every citizen.
Pratyush Kumar, Co-founder of Sarvam AI, showcased multilingual AI systems being built under the IndiaAI Mission, including India’s first sovereign foundational Large Language Model (LLM) for Indian languages—an initiative selected by the Government earlier this year.
He linked the session theme “Vigyan Se Samriddhi” with the role of AI in advancing scientific inquiry, decision-making, and public policy—including applications in agriculture, economics, and climate solutions.
He stressed that AI will become integral to every profession and emphasized the need for India-centric data, models, and linguistic technologies to ensure equitable prosperity—reflecting the PM’s focus on inclusive growth and technology-driven development.
The keynote addresses were followed by an engaging panel featuring Xavier Kurian (Neysa), Ganesh Gopalan (Gnani.ai), and Dr. Manish Modani (NVIDIA). Xavier Kurian noted that enterprise AI adoption in India is now a necessity rather than an experiment, with BFSI, manufacturing, healthcare, and citizen services rapidly scaling up AI-driven solutions. He emphasized the importance of innovation-driven thinking and applauded the government’s proactive support through the IndiaAI Mission.
Ganesh Gopalan underscored the government’s clear direction under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, recognising AI as a national differentiator for building a Viksit Bharat. He explained how sovereign datasets, foundational models, and innovation ecosystems under the IndiaAI Mission are enabling companies like Gnani.ai to build uniquely Indian models that can scale globally. He shared that government departments are adopting AI at an unprecedented scale, with multilingual voice automation handling billions of tokens daily—placing India ahead of several developed nations in AI deployment.
Dr. Manish Modani highlighted that India’s rapidly expanding HPC and GPU-backed infrastructure is multiplying research output in fields ranging from climate modelling to language technologies. He said India’s data scale, linguistic diversity, and scientific talent uniquely position the nation to lead the global transformation from AI to AGI.
Across all talks, speakers repeatedly stressed that India’s demographic strength, combined with the Government’s strong policy support, places the nation on a decisive path toward global leadership in AI and AGI.
Students were encouraged to embrace AI tools, pursue deep-tech fields, and contribute to India’s vision of becoming a knowledge-driven, innovation-led Viksit Bharat by 2047.
