'Don't compete with big AI models': Zoho founder
Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu thinks India shouldn't try to emulate or compete head-on with the massive Large Language Models (LLMs) currently dominating the AI landscape.
Calling it "this is a $50 billion, 100 billion game..." he suggests India focus on smaller, smarter AI instead.
His comments come just ahead of the big AI Impact Summit in New Delhi.
India's economic survey echoes Vembu's sentiments
Vembu's view lines up with what India's Economic Survey says—India doesn't have the huge computing power or money needed for giant AI projects right now.
Instead, Vembu recommends working on efficient, smaller-scale models that fit India's strengths, while the survey favored a bottom-up approach and noted that limited access to cutting-edge compute and capital makes pursuing foundational models challenging.
Zoho is already putting this idea into practice.
Meanwhile, here's more about the upcoming AI Impact Summit
The summit (Feb 16-20) is set to bring together over 35,000 people from 100+ countries, including tech leaders like Jensen Huang (NVIDIA).
There'll be hundreds of sessions and a research symposium where young researchers can show off their work—making it a hotspot for anyone curious about where AI is headed next.