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Nandan Nilekani

Co-Founder & Chairman, Infosys

Search every verified Nandan Nilekani interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Nandan Nilekani spoke at several events in late 2026, including the India Open Finance Summit, the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi, and the Global Fintech Fest. At these appearances, he discussed the growth of India's digital public infrastructure, comparing adoption rates of Aadhaar, UPI, and the account aggregator (AA) system. He noted that while Aadhaar has enrolled 95% of adults and UPI has around 550 million monthly active users, only 20% of adults use the account aggregator, and he argued there is potential to increase that figure by making data access a consumer-driven "pull" rather than a "push." Nilekani also addressed the impact of artificial intelligence on the economy and jobs. He said AI is not a "winner take all" technology and that job creation will likely come from enabling millions of small businesses rather than large companies. He described AI-led business transformation as a major opportunity for firms like Infosys and dismissed concerns about AI reducing demand for such companies as "disaster marketing." Additionally, he spoke about tokenization in finance, citing recent announcements from the Reserve Bank of India and SEBI, and advocated for building inclusive systems that reach the broader population.

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“My thesis on this is that this can only come by enabling millions of small businesses. In other words, you will continue to have large companies, you'll continue to have exports and all that, but really the big growth will come from enabling millions of small businesses who all of whom will create a few jobs. In other words, a small business is much more AI job proof. Why is that? Because small business has two, thre”

“The account aggregator is doing 10 lakh consents per day and 1.2 crore data pools. So it's quite large but only 20% of adults are using the account aggregator. So there's a huge potential for account aggregator to grow because there's no reason why half a billion people cannot be using account aggregator. So we have the infrastructure in place. We have the whole everything in place. Now it's about deepening and broad”

“I think this is all disaster marketing to suit the interests of large capital. The fact of the matter is that the requirement for companies like Infosys or others is actually more than ever before, because the transformation of enterprise is a very complex activity, and AI requires you to fundamentally reimagine the way you do business. It's a root and branch surgery that is required, and this in fact even more requi”

“I have a slightly different perspective. I think everybody is saying that AI is a general purpose technology. They compare it to fire, to the printing press, industrial revolution, whatever, but the thing about general purpose technologies is nobody can own or control it. You don't think of the whole world's electricity being supplied by one company, you don't think of the world's books by one printer, and so on. So ”

“India is facing an issue like the rest of the world, which is how do you create jobs for millions of young people? Of course, give them the proper education. Which is why I think you need to really boost entrepreneurship. Only by creating millions of small companies and startups, they will create the jobs. India is doing, by the way. 10 years ago, there were only 1000 small company startups. Today, 150,000 startups. ”

“I think the last 45 years, we have been there, this is the biggest transformation happening in the industry because AI is changing everything. AI coding is becoming very popular. It is also creating new opportunities because AI led transformation of business is the biggest story for the next decade. That requires a lot of systems and people to make that happen. I believe while coding may become less of an issue, AI b”

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