Industrializing AI At Scale: India Leads The Global AI Transformation | India AI Impact Summit 2026

At the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Martin Schroeter, Chairman and CEO, Kyndryl's leadership delivered a powerful message: AI's future isn't about dazzling demos—it's about industrialization at massive scale. While global organizations pour billions into AI, over two-thirds struggle to deliver real returns, and in India, 75% of projects stall after proof-of-concept. The bottleneck? Readiness, not innovation. The speaker highlighted mission-critical realities: deploying agentic AI across fragmented data, hybrid clouds, edge environments, and legacy systems—while meeting strict sectoral regulations, ensuring 24/7 resilience against cyberattacks, data drift, and outages. Trust is paramount—people must believe in AI decisions when lives, economies, hospitals, banks, airports, and energy grids depend on them. India stands as the world's premier proving ground. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision, initiatives like Digital India, India AI Mission, and digital public infrastructure enable responsible, inclusive scaling. Examples include the Unified Lending Interface slashing loan times dramatically and Kyndryl's work at Bangalore Airport, where agentic AI enables proactive, self-healing operations.The path forward: industrialize AI with robust infrastructure, embedded governance (policy as code), explain ability, and workforce reskilling. Nine in ten leaders see AI reshaping work—yet fewer than one in three feel their teams are ready. True impact arrives when AI moves from labs to reliable, governed systems that strengthen society, people, planet, and progress. India is leading the way.