Tech Explained: PM Modi inaugurates India AI Impact Expo 2026| India News in Simple Terms

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Marine Collins Ragnet, AI Lead and Senior Researcher at NYU’s Peace Research and Education Program (PREP), said it was “incredible to see the approach that India has taken to become kind of sovereign in its AI development.”

“I was saying it on the panel. think it’s incredible that this is the first panel that’s hosted in the global south,” Ragnet told ANI news agency. The researcher further said that India sits at an “interesting position” between “the global south and the global north.”

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: After inaugurating the India AI Impact Expo on Monday evening, Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacted with companies and startups there.

PM Modi visited various stalls at the Expo, which features over 600 high-potential startups and 13 country pavilions, PTI news agency reported.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives to inaugurate the India AI Impact Expo at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Prine Minister Narendra Modi on Monday evening inaugurated the India AI Impact Expo.

The India AI Impact Summit along with an expo is organized at New Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam and will continue till February 20. According to an advisory, the summit will be open to general public from February 17 after its inauguration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday evening.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Union minister of information and broadcasting Ashwini Vaishnaw on Sunday spoke about balancing the negative and positive impacts of AI.

“There are positive impacts of AI, including weather forecasting, climate change, agriculture, the discovery of new materials, and productivity gains. There are potential negative impacts,” Vaishnaw said.

He added that India was looking to balance these impacts to capture the benefits and contain the harms. “We will come out with a good outcome from this summit,” Vaishnaw said.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Posters and hoardings welcoming French President Emmanuel Macron were put up across Mumbai. Macron and his wife, First Lady Brigitte Macron, will be visiting India from February 16-19. The French President will arrive and Mumbai, and travel to Delhi to attend the AI Impact Summit 2026.

Macron is expected to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on February 17.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Tajikistan representative Firuzjon Sodiqov on Monday said the country is focused on leveraging AI to improve the speed and quality of public services for citizens.

“First of all, what we focus on is improving the quality of services and speed of services for citizens by using AI and deploying AI in different sectors,” Deputy Chair at the Artificial Intelligence Council under the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies of Tajikistan, Sodiqov, said, according to ANI news agency.

“I think we have very high expectations, given our follow-up on India’s AI progress and its initiatives at this summit,” Sodiqov asserted.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Artificial intelligence is reforming social good for generations to come and effectively augmenting essential human capabilities, Harish Krishnan, Managing Director and Chief Policy Officer Cisco Systems India, said.

Speaking at the AI Impact Summit 2026 on ‘Democratising AI Resources for Economic Growth and Social Good’, Krishnan said that skills that most matter are human skills, adding that “AI agents are doing it effectively”, ANI news agency reported.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Ottonomy Inc unveiled its end-to-end autonomous delivery ecosystem at the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi.

The ecosystem integrates Ottonomy’s Level-4 autonomous delivery robots, ‘Ottobots’, with smart storage infrastructure ‘Arrive Points’ from Arrive AI and drone logistics capabilities from Skyeair Mobility, PTI cited Ottonomy as saying in a statement.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Ashwini Vaishnaw, spoke on the crisis around the spread of “persistent disinformation, misinformation and deepfakes.”

Vaishnaw said that India is in talks with ministers of more than 30 countries in this regard, ANI news agency reported.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Principal scientific adviser Ajay Kumar Sood on Monday said that artificial intelligence is a “double-edged sword.”

At the session on ‘AI and Children: Turning Principles into Practice for Safe, Inclusive, and Empowering AI’, Sood said, “The governance objective should be to sharpen the edge of opportunity while blunting the edge of risk.”

He said that on the positive side, AI can support more personalised pedagogy by helping children learn at their own pace and also provide them with timely feedback beyond classroom hours, PTI reported.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: One of the key expectations from artificial intelligence, especially in public health, is that it should reduce the burden on the health care workforce, Punya Salila Srivastava, IAS and Secretary, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, said.

Delivering the keynote speech for the panel titled “National AI Strategy for Health” at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, she said that the entire health system has undergone a steady digital transformation over the past decade, PTI reported.

This blueprint therefore promotes open standards and adopts emerging technologies like generative AI, to strengthen service delivery and enable early disease detection, she said.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: The world’s largest largest artificial intelligence summit witnessed packed halls and long queues after its opening Monday. Tech moguls, industry leaders, policymakers, founders, and technologists arrived at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, PTI news agency reported.

The conference opened at 9.30 am to long queues, with huge billboards around the venue and across the Capital welcoming delegates.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Minister of State Jitin Prasada on Monday said that during the ‘AI for education’ session at the AI Impact Summit at the Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, the role of AI in education was discussed.

“…Discussed how technology is preparing schools, colleges, and students for the future, and spoke about the new opportunities for innovation and growth it brings,” Prasada said in a post on X. He said that the government was working towards making education more accessible and effective through AI under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“We are fully confident that this event will make a meaningful contribution towards using the power of AI to make India a global knowledge hub,” he said.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Gaurav Kataria, VP Digital (Manufacturing) and CDIO PSPD at ITC Ltd told ANI news agency that bringing the most brilliant minds from the globe into one stage in New Delhi, in India to talk about AI is a “fantastic endeavour” by the government.

Regarding AI, Kataria said that everyone has to “learn and evolve”, given that it is a “new technology.” However, Kataria emphasised on some “guardrails”. He further said that the government is “doing a great job from a policy perspective.”

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: As the first day of India AI Impact Summit continues in full swing at New Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam, commuters experienced traffic congestions and travel delays at several areas in the city.

While enhanced security arrangements and traffic diversions were placed in effect, long queues of vehicles and near-zero movement were reported on key arterial routes and transport hubs, including the Delhi-Meerut Expressway near Sarai Kale Khan, the DND Flyway, the Vikas Marg-ITO stretch, Naraina, the Delhi Cantt Metro station area, and the Old Delhi Railway Station-Pul Mithai corridor, reported news agency PTI.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Addressing a session at India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) Chief Intergovernmental Interagency cooperation and Partnerships Branch Sujit Mohanty said India has done a lot of work in using AI predictive analysis in disaster management.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can also play a vital role in disaster management, specially in minimising losses but it would need legal and policy framework for such new age technologies to be able to be relied upon by officials at ground level who would take decisions for preventive actions, news agency PTI reported quoting a top UNDRR official.

“This whole technology space is really growing well, growing fast… You are seeing solutions which were not possible earlier…,” Mohanty said, citing the usage of AI in predicting and analysing the risk disasters.

He also added that authorities should be present at the grassroot level and check if AI is really helping them in making decisions of people’s life, livelihood, and their economic assets, and see if damage due to disasters has been reduced.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam, Ministry of Electronics and IT secretary S. Krishnan said that the country is entering a decisive phase in its semiconductor and artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions, with sustained policy backing, competitive compute pricing, and long-term investments aimed at building sovereign capabilities

Noting the huge response on the first day of the event, he said that the energy and attendance exceeded expectations and reflected strong global interest in India’s AI and semiconductor ecosystem.

Krishnan also traced the policy foundation back to the National Policy on Electronics in 2012 and its acceleration after 2014.

“Ever since the national policy on electronics in 2012…post-2014 we have significantly attempted to add to our hardware progress,” news agency ANI quoted him as saying.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Shiprocket CEO and MD Saahil Goel on Monday said that artificial intelligence is set to play a pivotal role in scaling India’s e-commerce sector by creating digital access for millions of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and reducing operational friction, reported news agency ANI.

Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, Goel noted that while his platform has enabled over four lakh businesses to go online, there are still 60 million MSMEs in India that remain to be integrated into the digital economy and that the real power of AI lies in creating seamless access across the country.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Chief economic advisor V Anantha Nageswaran on Monday said AI adoption cannot just happen by drift and that requires a clear commitment to aligning technological adoption with mass employability.

As he virtually addressed a session at the AI Impact Summit 2026, Nageswaran underlined that countries need to move decisively by strengthening foundation or education, high quality skills, expanding labor-intensive service sectors, and removing the regulatory bottlenecks.

Calling the adaption a collaborative approach, he said that it would require a ‘Team India’ effort from the private sector and academics to policymakers.

“The window is open still, but it is not indefinite. We must act and act now,” news agency ANI reported quoting him as he added that there is a need for urgency to adopt AI.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Co-founder of AI4India, Alok Agrawal on Monday said that artificial Intelligence (AI) will not eliminate jobs but transform them, and that India is poised to emerge as a major global AI force.

He emphasized that technological disruption has historically created more opportunities than it has eliminated and added that the India summit will help the country to be projected as an AI nation, reported news agency ANI.

Drawing parallels with earlier technological revolutions, he said, “All the panelists believed that as old technology came, like computers, mobile phones, apps, that time (also) some jobs were finished but many new jobs were created,”

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Monday extended its ‘UPI One World’ wallet service to international delegates attending the India AI Impact Summit 2026 at New Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam, including visitors from over 40 countries, reported news agency ANI.

The service would permit inbound foreign travellers to perform real-time Person-to-Merchant (P2M) transactions across India without requiring a local bank account or an Indian mobile number.

Executive director of NPCI Sohini Rajola said, “UPI is the world’s largest real-time payment system. By extending the ‘UPI One World’ service to foreign guests at the India AI Impact Summit, we are providing a convenient way to experience India’s real-time payments ecosystem and Made in India technology. This initiative also offers a glimpse into how smoother cross-border payment systems can support a more connected global digital economy.”

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: CEO of Prisme.ai and global banking sector veteran Wafaa Amal put forward two considerate beliefs at the India AI Impact Summit 2026.

Speaking to Hindustan Times at the summit, she said, “India is a case study for a lot of countries who have the same means and yet they are a step behind, especially with the same level of constraints with regulation and sovereign solutions,” and that AI no longer needs to be proven, but industrialized.

“We can say we are behind in Europe, as are some other countries, because regulation is very hard. I know India has similar requirements as well. From my point of view, India is a case study that we can learn from,” Amal said noting India’s AI journey.

French AI company Prisme.ai works with a global customer base, with particular focus on sovereign agentic AI solutions for enterprises — this includes private cloud and reversibility, which Amal insists are non-negotiable.

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AI Impact Summit Delhi 2026 LIVE: Addressing a session in the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi on Monday, union minister Jitin Prasada said that India has the highest level of artificial intelligence (AI) skill penetration and has adopted a policy approach of avoiding over-regulation to ensure innovation thrives.

Noting that the present government is agile and listens to all ideas and that it finetunes its policies, programmes, as per the need of the hour, he stated that the country has the required trajectory, speed, and scale to offer to the world in the AI space, reported news agency PTI.

AI Impact Summit Delhi 2026 LIVE: Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Jitin Prasada on Monday said that every stakeholder, from industry and startups to researchers and youth, must contribute to making India a global AI leader.

Speaking at the AI Impact Summit, the minister underlined that the country’s ambition is not just to be an AI consumer but an AI service provider to the world, news agency ANI reported.

“It’s not only about the government making policies, but about every stakeholder, from industry to startups, to our young innovators and researchers. Every person has a stake and skin in the game,” Prasada said.