The Zerodha co-founder says Indian businesses should focus on AI applications, infrastructure and consumer products rather than competing with the US and China to build frontier models.
Nikhil Kamath believes India’s best path into artificial intelligence is not to chase the United States and China at the frontier of model-building, but to focus instead on the layers of business built around those models. Speaking to NDTV CEO and Editor-in-Chief Rahul Kanwal at the NDTV World Summit 2026, the Zerodha co-founder argued that Indian firms are better placed to create products and services that use AI, rather than trying to match the scale of capital available to the world’s biggest technology powers.
Kamath said he would steer a young founder towards opportunities in applications and services if starting again with little money or influence. He argued that the democratisation of knowledge, through the internet and AI tools, has made learning more accessible than ever. But he was sceptical that an Indian company could compete head-on in the most capital-intensive part of the AI stack, where huge sums are being deployed in the US and China. In his view, that makes adjacent businesses, including inference services built on open-source models, a more realistic opportunity for Indian entrepreneurs.
He also pointed to structural advantages that could help India build a meaningful role in the AI economy. According to Kamath, the country’s lower power and infrastructure costs could support data centre and computing businesses, including AI infrastructure ventures. He said the expense of building a megawatt of power capacity could be materially lower than in Western markets, while cheaper labour and electricity may improve the economics of AI-related operations.
Kamath widened the discussion beyond artificial intelligence to the broader shape of India’s economy. He said the country could learn from China’s habit of encouraging competition between regions, and suggested that state governments should be run with more of a business mindset. He argued that if states were allowed to keep a larger share of the gains from growth, they might become more aggressive in attracting investment and building new industries. He also said India should think beyond software exports and look at consumer brands and manufacturing, an area where he believes Indian companies can compete internationally.
That thinking also informs Kamath’s own venture-building. Through Foundry, he said he is interested in consumer products that can travel well beyond India, including everyday goods such as shampoo and toothpaste. He also said he would not be surprised if more countries built their own social media platforms and digital ecosystems as the internet becomes more fragmented. In his telling, that shift could open space for Indian companies to build services aimed at domestic users first and foreign markets later.
The conversation also touched on entrepreneurship, speculation and the tax system. Kamath said India would benefit from a culture that is more forgiving of failure, so that founders who take big swings can start again without facing lasting stigma. He praised curiosity and adaptability as traits that matter more than perfection, adding that the people he values most are those willing to challenge his own ideas. On financial markets, he defended the role of speculators in price discovery and argued that transaction taxes, fees and execution costs weigh heavily on retail traders. He called for a shift towards taxing income rather than transactions, saying the current structure can leave ordinary investors at a disadvantage.
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