India may be faster in AI adoption than the US in 10 years: Zoho's Sridhar Vembu
Like how UPI became mass-scale in India, AI could also be the same, Zoho Corporation Co-founder and Chief Scientist, Sridhar Vembu said while speaking at the AI Impact Summit.
India may be faster in AI adoption than America in ten years, with its youthful, more optimistic population embracing the new wave of technology, Zoho Corporation Co-founder and Chief Scientist, Sridhar Vembu, said on Wednesday.
Like how UPI became mass-scale in India, AI could also be the same, Vembu said while speaking at the AI Impact Summit.
Citing the example of fibre optics, he said back in the 2000s American venture capitalists sold many "10s of billions (of dollars) into telecom companies, particularly fibre optics" and it is "everywhere in India" but not so in America.
"...in 10 years...India might be faster in terms of AI adoption than even America," Vembu said.
He further said the reason is that "we have a very youthful, optimistic population. We don't have a population that is very sceptical...which is a blessing."
Unlike the "unwilling crowd", he said, in India, the openness to accept and embrace AI is much higher.
For the country to be ahead in AI, Vembu asked the young entrepreneurs and start-ups to "optimistically experiment" and keep learning from the challenges.
Vembu has been a vocal advocate of building deep technology capabilities from India, including investments in rural development initiatives and distributed engineering teams across smaller towns. Zoho’s own AI initiatives—embedded across its business software suite—reflect a broader push by Indian SaaS companies to integrate generative and contextual AI into customer relationship management, finance, HR and collaboration tools.
India’s demographic profile strengthens the argument for faster AI diffusion. With a median age under 30 and one of the world’s largest internet user bases, the country has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to leapfrog legacy systems. The rapid adoption of the Unified Payments Interface is often cited as an example of how digital public infrastructure, smartphone penetration and low-cost data combined to drive mass behavioural change in a short period.
As enterprises and startups experiment with AI-driven automation, vernacular language models and cost-efficient service delivery, India’s relatively lower legacy IT burden compared to developed economies could enable quicker integration of AI into new workflows.
(With inputs from PTI)
Edited by Jyoti Narayan