India poised to reap youth dividend in AI era

New Delhi, February 19 (IANS) The 'India-AI Impact Summit 2026', which commenced on February 16 with a powerful vision, places India's youth at the heart of the nation's artificial intelligence (AI) journey, according to an official statement issued on Thursday.

India has the largest youth population in the world, with over 65 per cent of its population under the age of 35, positioning this demographic powerhouse as an engine of economic momentum.

The summit reflects a shift from passive learning to active participation, redefining employment across sectors, spotlighting new skills, and the urgent need to sync education with industry needs. The focus is on boosting employability, enhancing productivity, and forging seamless bridges from classrooms to AI-driven careers, the statement explained.

Young innovators are driving the agenda at the summit through hands-on platforms such as innovation challenges, startup pitches, and live solution demonstrations. These structured engagements connect skills with market needs and channel India’s youth potential into productive capacity, it observed.

The Summit serves as a catalyst to accelerate job creation in emerging sectors, including Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics, which are projected to generate nearly 2 million jobs by 2030. By blending global insights with youth skilling and job creation, India is cementing the demographic dividend as the cornerstone of its AI strategy and a future-ready workforce.

AI is rapidly emerging as a transformative opportunity for India’s vast talent pool. By reshaping the employment landscape, AI is generating new roles, enhancing productivity, and expanding pathways for inclusive growth. India sees AI as a key lever to expand youth jobs and skills, blending emerging technology with inclusive growth and talent development.

Rising demand for AI skills and jobs is reshaping opportunities for young Indians. Between January 2023 and March 2025, AI-related job postings in South Asia increased from 2.9 per cent to 6.5 per cent of all vacancies, with demand for AI skills growing 75 per cent faster than for non-AI roles.

This shift signals a structural transformation in India’s labour market — one that increasingly rewards digital fluency, advanced technical capability, and interdisciplinary expertise. For India’s youth, AI is a pathway toward skill-intensive, future-ready employment across technology and adjacent sectors, the statement observes.

Recognising AI as a strategic employment driver, the Union Budget 2026–27 reinforced the government’s focus on AI skilling and talent development. The budget prioritised the Orange Economy, which overlaps with AI-driven fields like Animation, Gaming, Digital content, and Immersive media.

It allocated support for the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT), Mumbai to establish AI-aligned Content Creator Labs in 15,000 schools and 500 colleges, opening pathways for youth to gain future-ready skills and enter AI-centric job roles. This initiative is projected to generate around 20 lakh new jobs, directly boosting employment prospects for students, creators, and young professionals across India.

The Budget also highlighted AI and emerging technologies as central to shaping jobs and skills across sectors. It proposed an Education to Employment and Enterprise Standing Committee to assess how AI and related tech affect jobs and skill requirements, aiming to bridge education, work and enterprise -demand.

Affordable AI infrastructure and policy support under the IndiaAI Mission are also democratising access to compute, data, and innovation opportunities beyond metropolitan cities.

India’s AI opportunity is amazing: Sam Altman

 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Thursday said India is witnessing extraordinary growth in Artificial Intelligence adoption, describing the country as one of the company’s fastest-growing markets globally.

Speaking to media on the sideline of ‘India AI Impact Summit 2026’ in the national capital, Altman said India's AI opportunity is amazing. It's great to be here.

“This is one of our fastest growing markets in the world. Maybe it's the fastest at this point. It's certainly the fastest for Codex,” Altman told reporters.

Altman highlighted that India is now home to over 100 million weekly users of ChatGPT, ranging from students and teachers to developers and entrepreneurs.

“There’s more than 100 million people. They use ChatGPT every week,” he mentioned.

He noted that the scale and speed of adoption in the country underline its growing importance in the global AI ecosystem.

Earlier in the day, Altman announced the launch of the ‘OpenAI for India’ initiative at the summit.

The initiative aims to build infrastructure, strengthen skills and create local partnerships to develop AI solutions tailored for the country.

He said the goal is to build “AI with India, for India, and in India.”

Under this initiative, OpenAI will collaborate with leading Indian partners, starting with the Tata Group, to expand access to AI and unlock its economic and social benefits.

The partnership will focus on building sovereign AI capabilities, accelerating enterprise adoption, investing in workforce upskilling and supporting India’s growing AI ecosystem.

As part of OpenAI’s global Stargate initiative, the company and Tata Group will work together to develop AI-ready data centre capacity in India.

OpenAI will become the first customer of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) HyperVault data centre business, starting with 100 megawatts of capacity and potentially scaling up to 1 gigawatt over time.

Altman said India’s strong tech talent base, optimism around AI and government support position the country well to shape the future of democratic AI adoption at scale.

The planned infrastructure will allow OpenAI’s advanced models to operate securely within India, ensuring lower latency and compliance with data residency and security requirements.

India successfully conveys importance of inclusive AI: Accenture CEO Julie Sweet

 Accenture CEO Julie Sweet on Thursday said that the ‘AI Impact Summit 2026’ in India has successfully conveyed the importance of inclusive growth as well as inclusive AI.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the Summit here, she said it “has been a great recognition of the importance of countries coming together, private sector and the public sector, and it's really been a great testimony to the importance of India as well.”

At the ‘India AI Impact Summit 2026’, the government announced the New Delhi Frontier AI Impact Commitments, a landmark outcome of the summit that brings together leading frontier AI companies and India’s domestic innovators to advance inclusive and responsible artificial intelligence.

“One of the themes of the summit has been the importance of inclusive growth and inclusive AI, and I think the fact that there are so many people here from around the world,” shows the importance of the country,” Sweet noted.

The Summit witnessed a global meet of world leaders and Big Tech CEOs centred around the high-level opening ceremony of the Summit at Bharat Mandapam, inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The ceremony set the tone for the Summit’s focus on responsible innovation, scientific advancement, and international collaboration in shaping the future of Artificial Intelligence.

According to an official statement, the participation of global political leaders, multilateral institutions, and technology pioneers at the Summit inaugural session underscored the Summit’s stature as a defining platform for shaping the trajectory of Artificial Intelligence in an increasingly interconnected and rapidly evolving world.

N. Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Sons, described AI as the next foundational infrastructure, with transformative potential comparable to steam engines, electricity, and the internet.

He highlighted India’s digital public infrastructure achievements and positioned AI as a strategic national capability built across the full stack, from chips and systems to energy and applications.