Unacademy CEO Gaurav Munjal on Tuesday voiced his frustration over India’s lagging position in artificial intelligence (AI), asking, “Why are we lagging behind so much in AI? Founders are not starting up in DeepTech? Investors are not being bold? Lack of talent? Lack of solid research labs in universities? What am I missing?”
A social media user suggested that it was due to the lack of funds. To this, Munjal said that there was no lack of capital. "Funds are sitting on billions. Don’t know about research labs."
The global AI community is shaken by China’s DeepSeek, which announced a large language model (LLM) comparable to those of OpenAI, Google, and Meta — but developed at a fraction of the cost. DeepSeek revealed its model, R1, was built with just $5.6 million in computing power, far below the billions spent by US giants like Meta and OpenAI.
Karan Goel, founder and CEO of AI firm Cartesia, recently observed, “People in Bangalore are insanely ambitious, there’s a deep and genuine desire to do great work in creating products that impact the world. But…a consistent theme in my conversations with operators and founders was the lack of capital and support to take on really risky and interesting bets. The venture ecosystem in India doesn’t seem to support this type of ambition.”
"And, my conversations with the VC side suggested similar frustration, although with a strong desire to initiate change. I was a bit surprised at the level of unhappiness about this. It felt like there are shackles on great people that are preventing these companies from being built," Goel wrote after his visit to Bengaluru.
Rachit Seth, founder of Policy Briefcase, pointed to another critical gap: research and development. “Instead of developing our own AI model, India has focused on fine-tuning open-source models for Indian languages or specific applications. Foundational breakthroughs — akin to GPT-4, Claude, or China’s #DeepSeek — are notably absent. Our spending in R&D remains abysmally low. Research papers are 1/10th of China and the US,” he said.
India's underwhelming AI progress contrasts sharply with China's rapid advancements. DeepSeek’s R1 model, which operates with significantly less computational power, underscores how strategic investments in R&D can deliver game-changing results. By comparison, India’s technological infrastructure and funding appear insufficient to position it as a global AI leader.