AI & India’s Future | Tata Sons Chairman N. Chandrasekaran at Rakesh Jhunjhunwala Memorial Lecture

Thank you very much. Good evening to all of you. It is a tremendous pleasure and privilege to address all of you on this important occasion. I would like to start by thanking the Jhunjhunwala family and Ashoka University for inviting me to speak to you today. Rakesh is well known to all of us, and his impact on the economy and Indian stock market is legendary. But he was also, as he often would say, deeply inspired by the Tata Group. In a manner of speaking, he was a fierce champion of the Tata Group. To me personally, he was a great well-wisher and took the time to understand some of the strategic bets I was making. He would come and meet with me, ask questions, and fully supported me in some of my decisions, often publicly. More than anything, he was a very compassionate leader who believed in India's promise, India's potential, and finally India's people.

When I think about Rakesh, a very famous couplet by Thiruvalluvar, a very eminent sage-poet, comes to my mind. He has a chapter — those of you who don't know, the Thirukkural has about 133 chapters, each chapter has ten couplets, and each talks about a particular aspect of life. There is a chapter on compassion, and there are many aspects of Rakesh I can relate to, but there's one I want to quote today. I'm going to read it in Tamil, but it's just seven words. I often say Thirukkural is the earliest form of Twitter, because Twitter has 140 characters or so — this is much less. The one who is very compassionate and cares for his fellow human beings and for living beings, he never worried about himself or his life, and he didn't have to. Rakesh, as we all know, lived his life on his own terms. For all these reasons and many more, I am deeply honored to deliver this lecture today.

I speak to you in a world which is brimming with uncertainty. We are moving from a unipolar to a bipolar to a multipolar world with all the complexities as well as opportunities this tectonic shift represents. Trade barriers are on the rise, military conflicts are flaring up, and global supply chains face massive upheaval. Outcomes are becoming increasingly unclear, and our job as leaders is to navigate disruption while simultaneously spotting short- as well as long-term opportunities and making each one of them count. But don't worry — I'm really not going to talk about tariff barriers today. My topic today is about AI and digital. That's what Rakesh had asked me to talk about.

For years I've talked about major global shifts — big bets, big defining trends. I talked about digital acceleration a few years ago, the green transition, and then during the pandemic, the rebalancing of global supply chains to create resiliency over efficiency. Today, when I talk about AI, words struggle to convey how completely our world will soon change thanks to this technology, because its time has come. It is time for all of us to accept that AI stands apart. It is in its own category. AI is not just the next big trend — I would say it is THE big trend. With AI, a new story begins. To fully grasp its significance, one must look beyond modern technology and think of it as a civilization-defining, civilization-altering invention — like fire was, electricity was, and the wheel was. It is going to be that profound.

Unlike previous technological revolutions which arrived in a sequential manner from one geography to another, AI is emerging simultaneously everywhere. Not only that, it's being supercharged by parallel progress in a number of other technologies including semiconductors, cloud computing, quantum technologies, robotics, humanoids, energy innovations, and innovations in energy storage. What this means is it's creating connectivity between these technologies. You are not looking at the technology in isolation. All of us are used to the software world for a long time. Traditional software was always fixated on algorithms. Whereas generative AI learns all the time. Like the human brain, it assimilates all that it encounters — whatever it comes across, whatever it can hear, whatever it can see, whatever it can read. But unlike the brain, it remembers everything to perfection, with clarity, with unlimited capacity.

Imagine having a person who is in the top 0.1% of PhDs in every subject at the same time — physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, history, philosophy, economics, management. That's what you have with an AI companion today. Today's advanced generative platforms are in the top 0.1% of PhDs in every subject because everything has been fed to them. The other very interesting thing you can notice: other inventions have helped eliminate labor, but AI changes the very nature of innovation. It reverses it. In the past, it was always scientific discoveries that led to technological advancement — for example, breakthroughs in quantum mechanics led to computing and the whole digital age. But now, a technology is driving scientific discovery. For the first time ever, last year the Nobel Prize for Chemistry did not go to a researcher in chemistry. It went to developers of an AI model that predicts protein structures — a glimpse of how AI tools will revolutionize drug discovery.

Previously, determining the 3D structure of a single protein typically took a year or more. Now, AI tools can do this in a matter of minutes. This could happen in every field — biochemistry, engineering, other sciences, or even economics. The main point here is that the emergence of AI is not the latest stage of incremental change. This is actually the starting point.

Now, coming to the importance of GenAI in India: no one can deny that GenAI will change the shape of human progress. But here in India, it has the potential to be immediately relevant and fundamentally transformative. When I wrote Digital Nation six years ago, I explored three fundamental truths about India. First, we face an access paradox. Despite having significant human resources, we struggle to deliver essential services to all citizens. We have lots of doctors but not enough rural healthcare. Lots of teachers but uneven educational quality. Lots of financial institutions but insufficient financial inclusion. We have the resources but can't provide access. We have talent but can't give jobs. We simultaneously face talent shortages and unemployment, shortage of specialized skills in certain sectors while having millions of educated but underemployed youth. Finally, our diversity requires unique solutions — one-size-fits-all approaches fail to address the incredibly diverse nature of our nation linguistically, culturally, and economically.

My book recognized that such challenges could not be solved through traditional infrastructure expansion alone. We cannot go on building infrastructure and expect the problem will be solved, primarily because the gaps are too large. We neither have the capital nor the time, but the needs are too immediate. This led to a simple but powerful insight: we must leverage digital technologies to bridge these gaps. That's how the digital nation concept was born — a uniquely Indian approach that bridges the gap between technology and traditional systems rather than trying to replace them. Second, augment human capabilities with technology rather than just automating jobs away. The digital approach always believes in using the power of technology to give higher levels of capability to human beings. Third, connect the unconnected by extending access to essential services where physical infrastructure is insufficient.

But we have come a long way since then, because GenAI democratizes knowledge in many ways. First, latest AI systems have been trained on vast repositories of knowledge from medical research to agricultural best practices to educational textbooks from every subject in the world. This puts specialized knowledge in the hands of everyone with a mobile connection. Expertise previously concentrated in urban centers and elite institutions is now at the fingertips of our farmers, educators, and rural folks — if only we can train them and skill them to use it.

Second, it bridges language barriers. With over 780 dialects spoken across India, language barriers have always limited access to services and opportunities. GenAI powers real-time translation and localization at a scale previously unimaginable. Suddenly a Tamil-speaking doctor can treat a Marathi-speaking patient instantly and seamlessly. Finally, it simplifies technological tools. For millions of Indians with limited literacy or digital skills, complex interfaces made many tech tools inaccessible. GenAI is creating natural conversation-based interfaces that adapt to the user. A farmer can speak to an AI system in his or her local dialect rather than navigating bewildering menus or forms. Importantly, India's freedom from legacy systems means we can use these GenAI tools in many sectors — health, agriculture, finance, education, law, manufacturing, and anything in between.

These incremental changes are a promising peek into the future. But for India to achieve its goal of being a Viksit Bharat, of achieving per capita income of $15,000 or $20,000, these aren't enough, because AI must be culturally relevant. This is a very important point. AI must be culturally relevant with a sovereign approach to national infrastructure, models, platforms, and governance. We simply cannot risk having our activities, our languages, and our cultures processed through AI systems that do not understand the Indian context. If a western-trained model without understanding our context is going to interpret all our stuff, we are not going to end up in the right place.

So many fear AI as a job destroyer. However, the digital nation approach represents our greatest opportunity to create millions of new jobs. The word 'new' is very critical here. Not white collar, not blue collar, but new collar. The new roles which infuse human skills with AI augmentation. In health, a community worker equipped with AI diagnostic tools can become an enhanced paramedic — a worker capable of providing primary care at a level that once required years of advanced training. These people have very basic or low-level skills, but what they can achieve is a much higher level of competency because AI is helping them. They are no longer blue collar but they don't become a doctor, so they become new collar — a huge opportunity.

My estimate is, if we get this right, yes, between now and 2030 we will lose some jobs, because the jobs you lose and the jobs you gain are going to be very different. But I believe we will create a net addition of at least 30 million new collar jobs across industries. While automation may displace some jobs, it could simultaneously create 30 to 40 million new jobs as we are able to close access gaps that currently exist. This will not simply be handed to us. Industry and government must work together on a massive, unprecedented scale to help people learn new skills. Workers will need a lot of support as they move from at-risk roles to focused ones. This means offering flexible training programs that people can do while still working. It requires a level of compassion — a bit of Rakesh Jhunjhunwala — towards all these people who will need to transform their roles.

It means working with schools, colleges, universities, and companies to give both learning and real-world experience. It is an approach that resonates deeply with the needs of the global majority — the billions in developing nations who share challenges similar to India's. We are uniquely positioned to lead this alternative vision with our technological prowess, our domestic diversity, our democratic values, and our developmental challenges. By pioneering the digital nation approach domestically and sharing it globally, I truly believe India can create a very powerful alternative. This represents not just a technological opportunity but a geopolitical one, with India as the natural partner for not only developing nations but also developed nations that seek a human-centered path to digital transformation, not a fully mechanized one.

I would like to conclude now. First, when I developed the digital nation vision, I believed it represented a uniquely Indian approach to development. Today, with the remarkable rise of generative AI accelerating this vision — little did I know when the book was launched in November 2019. I couldn't go on the book tour because the pandemic came, but the pandemic completely validated the book, and now GenAI is taking it to a different level. I am even more convinced that this path can transform India's development trajectory. We can deliver quality services to citizens, create meaningful employment in large numbers, and establish India as a global leader in human-centered AI.

As I look towards India's future, I envision a nation where the digital AI approach has transformed our greatest challenges into our greatest strengths. Where our diversity becomes a source of innovation rather than division. Where technology bridges gaps rather than creates new divides. Where AI augments human capital rather than renders it obsolete. Where our demographic dividend becomes our greatest asset. The future belongs to those who can bridge the digital and the physical, who can connect technology with humanity. The future is India's to create. Thank you all for listening.

I think there's no easy answer. First, I enjoy my job. I just love learning different industries. I love learning different value chains. To some extent, I used to do that when I was selling TCS services to global clients — I needed to understand the value chain so that I could always speak in that context. But sometimes when things are complex, you want to simplify things. So my first job when I came to Tata Sons is I had the opportunity to look at everything with a fresh pair of eyes, because except TCS I did not have visibility of any companies. So I started by telling everyone that we got to simplify this group. And actually the simplification — exactly what all we will do, even I didn't know, but I knew we were going to do a lot of things. So that's what we started looking at.

Then I kind of continued with the S series. I started with simplify. Then I said we're in so many adjacent businesses, we got to synergize. So we started synergizing, it created value. Then I said we got to scale — so if it doesn't scale, then this whole energy thing came in. Pandemic time in 2020, we decided that we will go fully into new energy, electric vehicles, green power, and so on. So we added sustainability. Then the whole supply chain disruption happened. Then we said we'll put supply chain. Then we were getting into semiconductors, batteries, and so many things. So we said we are creating so many new factories currently. We are building at least in the new areas alone — between semiconductors, batteries, and electric vehicles — we're building seven new factories. All will open between now and early 2027. These factories will employ 500,000 jobs — five lakh people in the next five years, manufacturing jobs. So we said safety is important. So we put safety. Then we said speed. So now what I started with a single S has become seven S's now. We've been adding, and I know teams are responding. Everyone is enjoying what they do, and we see a lot of opportunities.

Enjoyable journey. So I don't worry about that. I always focus on what I can do. I don't worry too much about the outcome. That's why I am mostly calm, because if you're always worried about the outcome then you can never sleep.

No. I think you were in the board when we took the call to shut down telecom. Yeah. I still remember we had a 50,000 crore hole. Then I went to the board, and Amit was very much part of the board and Nitin was there and others were there. So I remember that meeting, where we said either we put 50,000 and get out or we put 100,000 and stay. So I think we took some bold calls.

And then people even used to ask me many times those days, what is your debt, in informal conversation. So the first decision we took was to get fitness first, performance next. So look at only the balance sheet. Don't look at P&L if you don't have the right balance sheet. So fix the balance sheet in all companies. I think that helped, and we had done all of that before the pandemic. God forbid, if you had not really focused on the balance sheet before the pandemic, the pandemic would have eaten us. So I think I would say we were sensible, we were very principled, but there is a lot of blessing and luck. I think blessing really favors the brave, and probably I would say the timing worked out. So the Bhushan Steel bought at the right time, we bought it, we integrated, and then we enjoyed one home run. But if you had done it two years later then would have been interrupted. So the many things that we did, the timing just worked out.

See, we are in a great situation. I don't think there is any country in the world today so well placed for riding a huge trajectory of economic growth and human capital development like India, not even close. I say this with lot of thought, not generally making a flippant statement. We have a young population. We have an aspiring population. We have a huge demographic advantage. We need more of everything. Tell me one country which needs more of everything. We need more healthcare. We need more education institutions. If there are 100 Ashokas today, still there'll be people left without admission. Which country in which people can score 98.5% and not make it to not only a college of your choice, a course of their choice? So we need more hotels, we need more tourism, we need more shops, we need more roads, more bridges, we need more power. You take anything that you need, there is a shortage and there is a demand. So I just don't understand when even, I don't mean to hurt anyone, even some educated people say are we really going to grow or are we going to collapse. Why will we collapse? We have to work hard to collapse. If you want to collapse we can, but for us we have to work very hard to collapse.

Second point is we have to give it to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has created a sense of belief in this country. Forget everything else, but he has created a sense of belief in every person, an entrepreneur, a student, sports person, so that everyone can envision to be the best version of themselves. That you have to give it to him, and he does it over and over again. I don't know how he finds time, but he reaches to people and then he does it. So the general mood of the public in this country is this: I want to be good, I want to be better. So there is a lot of demand and this will continue for a very long time. So what we need to do is to execute. The mistake we do, in my humble opinion, we think execution is speed. So we kind of try to run faster. Actually we got to see execution not as speed but as removing stumbling blocks. So when you want to run, you want to run where there are no blocks. If you have blocks, without removing the blocks you run, what happens is that you fall. And that is why this speed we don't get. Why are we only always talking about 6.5? Very few people will say you can grow to 8 or 9, but actually we should be growing at 8 or 9. So I believe that many years ago India always used to be traveling in the A roads and B roads as an analogy. Suddenly we'll go to the highway and then we will say we have arrived, without removing all the road blocks. Then before we realize we'll take the exit and come to the A roads and B roads. But I think today we are in the highway. We are always in the highway but we are not able to continuously travel on the fast lane. Sometimes we switch to the slow lane. So that's why sometimes we expect seven, we go to 6.5. Sometimes we think we can go to eight but we are not able to go. So I think the opportunity is clear, demand is there. There are talent, there is skill sets, there is aspiration, but we need to make sure there is enough capital. We need to make sure that the small and medium companies have always liquidity. We need to make sure there are sufficient infrastructure, support system, everything is there. So we need to work on the enablers.

I am absolutely bullish that for a long period of time this country can grow.

I think it's a fascinating question and it needs to be addressed according to me in multiple dimensions in parallel. First, it's absolutely true that we have educated people but not ready for the jobs, and we ourselves have to blame that, needs to be fixed. But we can't wait till fixing it. So the educational system needs intervention and that needs to be fixed. The quality of education has to get benchmarked. But having said that, we used to do it in TCS, every engineer we recruit we put them through a six months training and get them job ready, and that's the investment industry has to make until such time that we make that. But now there is another way of doing it also, because skills is getting a major thrust. So how do we create skills institutes and link it with the job requirements and then create a process by which the right skills are imparted again set at the right benchmark level so that the skills initiative gains momentum, where we give them 21st century skills. It's just not about technical skills, it's about collaborative skills, it's about how to conduct themselves in a meeting, how to ideate, how to, so many aspects of doing a job. All those things we have to do. We have to address primary education seriously and we need more Ashokas. There is no question we need to scale such universities to levels that we need to scale. The other aspect we need to focus on is research and how do we create research programs. So even in Tata group I used to think, I'm being very open, many times it comes to my mind all the time, while we have individual companies doing research, originally what JRD probably set up called Tata Research and Development Center, that's TCS now, and only TCS is happening. What does it take for me to create a huge Tata research park with I don't know 2,000 PhDs working in next generation energy, next generation material, and we should be thinking like that. And for that, what is the amount of, and if five or six big research parks come and then you kind of tie up with IITs, tie up with the Ashokas to do sabbaticals, and tie up with the hospitals like Tata Memorial to do medical research, then radical and computer science research. So we need to create modern day research centers where we bring the multi-disciplinary research, we bring the materials and chemistry together. We bring chemistry and artificial intelligence together, medical science and tech together. So if we do those kind of research and you create intellectual property. So that is the next thing. So this question about talent, we should look at a 10-year journey. Government can do a lot but government cannot do it alone because it is the industry, academia, and whoever has the problem, that collaboration will make research thrive.

See, it's not only spending money. I don't think that we harvest what we spend.

You have the right to ask. I have, you have the right not to answer.

So I think the problem is not tariffs, the problem is the reversal of a model that we've gotten used to for six, seven decades. So it's a model change. If whole world had operated with tariffs between countries all the time, then the whole supply chain would not have got globally integrated. So what is the problem? The problem is the global supply chain has got integrated. So very aptly, globalization basically, you produced where it is cheap or where it is efficient and is sold where there is a demand. So that's a byproduct of the model that the world got used to for so long. Now if you change the model, the underlying supply chain infrastructure has to change. That can't change overnight because there is talent issue, there is raw material issue, there is sourcing issue, there's so many things. So that is going to be the fundamental problem. So I think it will play out. It's not going to get solved. It's not going back to zero because once something is announced some part of it will stay. So where it settles, whether it settles uniformly across countries or it all gets solved bilaterally, only time will tell. And there's no, I think if you want to know more there are very exciting videos on YouTube where every minute a new video is coming.

I painted a very positive picture and I truly believe it is a positive picture. See, I think if you're going to think that AI is going to take over and there's no going to be jobs left, I think that is a very wrong view. And also we try to generically talk about is it a 40-hour week, 70-hour week, 90-hour week, so how many hours should one work? I mean generic topics, but actually that's not the way it works. I mean I for one, I'm pretty sure it's true for many people, that I am kind of working more 24 by 7. In the sense that it is not that I don't take breaks, I sleep well, I get up, it's like a switch that turns on and then when you're going for a run it's in a sleep mode, suddenly it turns on. So it is about what you do, enjoying there is. And then there are sometimes if you take the investment banker, they will say when there is a deal they don't go home for 3 days or 4 days or one week till the deal is done, after that then they don't work for 2 weeks, they only go and have coffee and cake and evening a glass of wine with somebody. So there are different types of jobs required that require different types of things. But the point is the routine jobs will get automated, I can clearly see humanoids.

See, I'll tell you a simple thing. I did my elective in artificial intelligence in 1985, my fourth semester. I did my elective in artificial intelligence. The way artificial intelligence was taught then and what GenAI is today is completely different. I also did a course in robotics. Robotics was all about mechatronics and AI was more about heuristics. And today GenAI with all this power, see every published document, entire Wikipedia and everything else that is there, it's all there in the system now. And it's real time that before you ask and type the question it immediately is able to pull back. And if that GenAI is going to be connected to robotics, a robot in those days was just mechatronics. If you teach it to move an arm it'll move, it will walk, it'll do a Michael Jackson dance. Now the latest humanoids I've seen, I've seen some of them run like a human being. And a typical robot 10 years ago with simple capability of only mechatronics used to cost a million dollars. Today these modern day humanoids cost $16,000. It will come to four digits and three digits probably. And then you can connect GenAI to these humanoids. So you will have humanoids which will learn. For example, you put 10 humanoids here and then we are here. We started the session and then we end the session. In this 3 hours, it would have come here with certain capability. But when it leaves here, it would have listened, seen and observed everything for the 3 hours. It will go richer. That's the possibility today. So automation will happen. Factories will get automated. But then there are a huge number of other services which only humans can do. And that intervention, this you should see them as helping a human being. Like a spreadsheet came, before spreadsheets the accountants used to close books. How many days? I don't know how many are CPAs here, running Deloitte, PwC people. I mean they would have, you know, they'll keep on counting, right? We have seen this. Some of the young people may not know, with the pencil they will add, then you know, and then spreadsheets came. That doesn't mean that the accounting is gone. So it's taking a different avatar. So the new collar jobs will be jobs that will enable low skilled and no skilled people to perform at higher levels of productivity. If a surgeon, a doctor, if you go to Breach Candy, the best surgeon is not only doing the job that he can only do, half the time he is coming down to fill the gap between him and the next level person. So their productivity is wasted. You go to the AIIMS in Delhi you'll see that all the time. So what this will do is elevate people to do a higher level of job. So the specialist can focus on even more specialist work. A specialist should actually spend time in doing research for the next level. They don't get time today. They're already overworked. So I believe that. So coming to your question, what would I advise? Dream big. World is full of possibility. So much economic growth is going to happen.

But there is another fascinating theory I have. I don't know whether I should say it.

So I'm writing a piece on this. Someday I will publish it. I do see the possibility of a new cadre of people who will be hired and given money only to spend, to grow consumption.