India is at an inflection point in its digital transformation journey. The country has made remarkable strides in digital adoption; the next wave is about scaling responsibly and competitively. That requires coherence across governance, data infrastructure, and innovation funding so businesses can move faster, citizens can trust outcomes, and the economy can compound value over time.
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Governance: Moving from compliance to confidence via Budget
India’s regulatory focus on data protection and cybersecurity has been essential, but AI introduces new dimensions of responsibility. Algorithms now influence credit decisions, healthcare outcomes, hiring, and public service delivery, making clarity on accountability non negotiable. Enterprises need practical guidance on responsible AI to avoid paralysis by caution and to accelerate deployment with confidence.
Budget 2026 can catalyze this shift by formalizing ethical AI frameworks grounded in transparency, auditability, and risk management, along with enabling oversight that scales. Rather than constraining innovation, such clarity unlocks it. Financial institutions can expand credit scoring, fraud detection, AML analytics, and real time risk modeling. Healthcare networks can scale predictive diagnostics, personalized pathways, clinical decision support, and AI assisted claims adjudication. HR platforms can adopt bias aware screening and skills mapping while complying with fairness standards. This governance backbone allows Indian enterprises to commercialize responsibly and at speed.
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Data infrastructure: The backbone of Viksit Bharat
India’s success with Digital India and the National Data and Analytics Platform shows the power of coordinated digital public infrastructure. Yet, data needed for advanced AI is still fragmented, captured in silos, and inconsistently curated. The issue is not volume, it is usability. High value AI depends on interoperable, well stewarded, privacy safe datasets that can be reused across sectors.
A forward looking roadmap should prioritize interoperability standards, data stewardship roles, and trust frameworks that enable safe linkage of public and private datasets. Public private partnerships can accelerate ingestion of satellite imagery, IoT telemetry, and geospatial layers to power agritech use cases such as crop monitoring, yield prediction, and soil health optimization, as well as smart city systems for traffic orchestration, energy balancing, water leakage detection, and urban safety analytics. Investments in last mile connectivity, storage, scalable analytics, and privacy enhancing technologies will ensure India’s data backbone is robust for the decade ahead.
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Budget 2026: Innovation funding fueling long term growth
India’s startup ecosystem is vibrant, buoyed by Startup India and the Fund of Funds for Startups. But advanced AI capabilities, including compute infrastructure, foundational model development, applied research, and deep skills, require patient capital and shared risk. Encouragingly, budget allocations have risen from ₹551.75 crore in FY 2024–25 to ₹2,000 crore in FY 2025–26 for the IndiaAI Mission, signaling intent to invest for the long term.
The next step is deliberate prioritization and scale up in high impact domains:
• Natural Language Processing for Indian languages to make digital services inclusive across Bharat
• Healthcare AI for early risk detection, precision protocols, drug discovery, and public health surveillance
• Agriculture AI for advisory services, climate resilience, and input optimization tied to MSP and market linkages
• Smart Cities leveraging AI for multimodal mobility, demand side energy management, and civic service responsiveness
• Industrial AI for predictive maintenance, quality inspection, and supply chain intelligence in manufacturing clusters
Such investments reduce dependence on external platforms, deepen domestic capability, and create exportable solutions.
Business impact and Viksit Bharat vision
For enterprises, governance clarity lowers uncertainty and speeds up procurement and deployment cycles. With interoperable data systems and access to compute, startups can move from pilots to production, while established firms can scale AI across P and L lines. For citizens, ethical safeguards and explainability build trust in AI enabled services, whether in financial inclusion, health access, or smart mobility, reinforcing confidence in India’s digital economy.
Turning momentum into leadership
Budget 2026 can mark a decisive shift from momentum driven adoption to foundation led leadership. By aligning governance, data readiness, and long term funding, India can create an ecosystem that is rapid in innovation yet resilient by design. The vision of Viksit Bharat is not only about deploying technology; it is about building institutions and infrastructure that compound value inclusively. With intentional policy and sustained investment, India can turn digital momentum into durable, globally competitive leadership, benefiting businesses and citizens alike.
(The author is Partner and Leader – Cyber, Grant Thornton Bharat)