"India Has a Great Opportunity in AI, Period" – Dr. Vishal Sikka (Ex-Infosys) 1. TCS has partnered with him to fight its existential crisis 2. PM & officials have met him multiple times 3. Oracle, GSK, BMW, Stanford have him on their Boards for AI What is Vishal Sikka Saying: Vishal Sikka – India’s World-Beating Asset in Silicon Valley a. Sikka did his Stanford PhD thesis on AI in the 90’s when no one had even heard of AI. b. As Infosys CEO from 2014 to 2017, he forewarned in every speech, meeting, shareholder’s letters (and resignation letter) that AI would disrupt IT Service Companies. c. He took 3 steps at Infosys to lead the AI race for India. (Next Section) Sikka’s 3 Steps Which Led to His Exit from Infosys a. In 2015, he decided to be an early investor in OpenAI along with: Sam Altman, Peter Thiel (PayPal), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), and Elon Musk (Tesla). Infosys promoters backed out of this risky bet. b. Sikka acquired Israeli AI firm Panaya for $200M in 2015. The sycophants and jealous Board members within Infosys spread a rumour that the acquisition was overvalued and Sikka had taken a cut. Internal investigation was ordered, nothing wrong was found. c. Last Straw: In April 2017, Sikka launched the next-generation AI platform NIA at Infosys. The goal was to take lead in “proprietary AI” and build own models in India rather “live on rented AI” forever and enrich Google, OpenAI, etc. Infosys Board was reluctant to go “all in” with NIA. Sikka resigned in August that year. Sikka’s 2019 AI Presentation at NITI Aayog a. In Sept 2019, all major Indian newspapers carried this PTI headline: “India Can Become World Leader in Artificial Intelligence: Vishal Sikka” b. At a time when there was no ChatGPT, Gemini, or self-driving cars, Vishal Sikka gave a presentation on AI before NITI Aayog at the PM’s request, where officials of 20 Union Ministries were gathered. c. He proposed a two-pronged strategy: (1) Train the world’s largest AI talent pool in Indian schools and universities; and (2) Invest and build AI systems in India at a very large scale to leap-frog in the AI race. Nobody in India understood in 2019 what Sikka was saying. Vishal Sikka is Back: What is He Saying in 2026 a. Last month Sikka had another meeting with the Indian PM and team. He is going to be a key participant at the India AI Impact Summit 19~20 Feb, 2026, which is a massive event with all top tech global leaders invited. b. Indian IT Services: TCS has entered into a major partnership with Sikka’s AI firm and he recently met TCS CEO and top management. He told them it is not too late to join the AI race; the race has barely begun. c. Margin Erosion in Indian IT Companies: Indian IT’s original model was labour arbitrage. If a client wanted 200 engineers on a project, India could supply the cheapest. Now the same project can be done with 50 engineers + AI at much cheaper cost. So, to survive, Indian IT profit margins have already come down from 25% to 15%, and are rapidly declining further. d. Sikka’s Advice to IT Services Companies: You have to shift the delivery model from labour arbitrage to “Labour + AI” arbitrage. It means, the AI component (AI platform, LLM models, AI applications) must be your own proprietary technology, and not rented from others. e. If you rent AI, you lose the arbitrage – and then the Indian IT industry’s end is near. “There will be a lot of blood on the streets,” his exact words. (“Rent” also means foreign dependence forever in strategic technologies.) f. Building Own AI Models: The idea that India is too late in the AI race, so let other people build AI – is a stupid idea, he says. “God has not pre-ordained that only certain people can build foundation models, and Indians are not one of them.” India has 18% of the world’s population. We have to build our own foundation models, our own large-scale AI systems, and our own world-class applications on top of them. (Note: That’s exactly the way China thinks.) g. “Skill Gap” is a Loser’s Excuse: Out of 8 billion people in the world, only about 1.5 million are able to build AI applications. The number of people who can deploy AI in production is just a few hundred thousand. And the number of people who can build a frontier foundation model is less than 25,000 on the whole planet (concentrated in San Francisco, London, and a few Chinese cities.) These are basic skills, and not skills pre-ordained by God for a chosen few. ENDQUOTE [By Vishal Sikka] Legendary computer scientist Alan Kay used to say: “In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man (with half-baked knowledge) is king, but the two-eyed man (who is a visionary genius) is in for a hell of a ride (suffers a backlash and is called a fool.)” @arabicatrader