andan Nilekani, the chairman and co-founder of Infosys, founding chairman of Aadhaar, and a driving force behind India’s digital economy, shared his visionary insights on AI, education, and the future of work during a recent event.
Known for architecting Aadhaar—the world’s largest biometric identity program—and scaling digital public infrastructure like UPI, Nilekani’s perspective offers a roadmap for leveraging AI to transform India. As the founder of EducationeNxt.in, I’m excited to unpack his views and their implications for education and beyond.
AI in India: A Hub for Use Cases
Nilekani sees India as a potential global leader in AI application, not just model development.
While AI has captured public imagination since ChatGPT’s rise, he believes the real value lies in applying AI to business, society, and government. India’s talent pool and scale position it to lead in implementation.
He emphasizes population-scale AI, drawing from the success of Aadhaar (1.3 billion users, 80 million daily authentications) and UPI (400 million users, 17 billion monthly transactions).
Nilekani’s vision focuses on affordability and accessibility—ensuring even a farmer in a village can use AI at a low cost.
A key focus is language AI, given India’s 22 official languages and hundreds of dialects. Nilekani supports initiatives like AI for Bharat at IIT Madras, which builds Indian language databases.
Imagine a farmer in Bihar speaking in Bhojpuri to access farming insights—this is the future Nilekani envisions, where voice-based AI in local languages democratizes access.
The Future of Work: Opportunities Amid Disruption
On the future of work, Nilekani is optimistic. AI will boost productivity—tools like GitHub Copilot and Cursor are already transforming software development.
While some jobs may be automated, new opportunities will emerge as AI enables novel applications. Enterprise AI, unlike consumer AI, requires transforming legacy systems and silos, creating demand for skilled professionals.
Highlighted Section: India’s Gen Z and the AI RevolutionNilekani highlights India’s unique position: "I think the Indian workforce, you know, we have the largest Gen Z population in the world, and they're all very tech-savvy.
Think about it—Gen Z are people born after 1997, so they were 10 years old when the iPhone came out. They’ve been born to this world, right? So I think they will quickly adapt to this AI world. I have no doubt.
India will actually have the largest number of people who will use AI to solve real problems—this will be the biggest place."
To capitalize on this demographic dividend, he advises: "First, we have to do massive work on reskilling and getting people ready for this AI revolution.
Firms that invest in infrastructure, training, and learning—that’s very important. You cannot do this without investing in your human capital to get them ready for this AI revolution.
That’s table stakes for everyone." He also notes AI’s limitations: "Where human messiness is involved, it’s not really all that great. Your ability to lead, align people to the same goal, collaborate, form teams—those human skills, empathy—those skills will never be done by AI. So we have to get our leaders ready for much better human skills to lead in this world of AI."
For young professionals entering the workforce, Nilekani recommends: "The two skills are human skills—people skills—and thinking from first principles, the ability to get to the conceptual basis of what you do.
Thinking from first principles is very important because the middle stuff will get automated. Coding, you’ll use some co-pilot or something. So both human skills and thinking from first principles are what we need."
He also predicts an entrepreneurial surge: "10 years back in 2015, we had maybe a few thousand entrepreneurs. Now we have 150,000 entrepreneurs. My estimate is by 2035, we’ll have a million entrepreneurs because we’re creating a virtuous cycle of entrepreneurship.
All those guys will use AI to solve very key issues in India. If a million smart people are solving problems with AI, something’s going to happen, right?" Despite fears, he urges embracing AI: "It’s a massive change, a massive discontinuity.
People are rightly concerned, but we have to embrace it. The genie’s out of the bottle. We have to work on mastering it, applying it for good purpose."
Education: Bridging Gaps with AIHighlighted Section: AI’s Role in Transforming EducationNilekani’s focus on education aligns with EducationeNxt’s mission: "There’s a set of children who have access to the best education—they’re able to read, they have an iPad to put them to sleep, and all that.
They are well-served. But the real challenge in India is children who can’t read, write, or do math. In public schools, while they go to school, they don’t learn. So our focus is on them.
If they are able to read and write, then they can join this other category of children. We are using AI to enable children who can’t read, write, or do math to learn those foundational skills.
They’re using AI to help diagnose gaps in their knowledge and help them practice. It’s really like using AI to practice those skills, and it’s being rolled out now in four states.
If India’s future is its human capital, and the human capital is not educated enough to do basic things—read, write, arithmetic—then there’s no future, right? So that’s what we’re focusing on."
Sectors Poised for Disruption: Which Sectors Will Be Disrupted Most by AI Nilekani sees AI impacting every sector: "At Infosys, we work with thousands of companies around the world, and we are seeing activity in every sector. Certainly, financial services is a big one because there’s no physical stuff—it’s all digital.
People are applying it for credit, chatbots, wealth management assistance—all kinds of things. In each area, there is stuff happening. What’s exciting is that the applications are so varied.
A pharmaceutical company can use it to discover new drugs faster, or a company making batteries can use it to discover new materials faster.
The fact that you can accelerate the pace of innovation using AI by discarding all the dead-end options and honing in on what will work is a new thing that we have now. That’ll be big."
India’s AI-Powered FutureNandan Nilekani’s vision underscores India’s potential to become a global AI powerhouse by focusing on use cases, education, and inclusive growth.
His emphasis on language AI, education for the underserved, and reskilling for the future of work aligns with EducationeNxt’s mission to drive innovative learning. As India navigates this AI revolution, Nilekani’s insights remind us to embrace change, invest in human capital, and apply technology for societal good.
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