Indian IT firms must build its own coding agents to stay competitive in AI era: MeitY's Abhishek Singh
Speaking at a CII conclave, IndiaAI Mission CEO flags risks of relying on foreign AI tools and outlines India’s agentic AI ambitions.
- Feb 5, 2026,
- Updated Feb 5, 2026 12:50 PM IST
India must develop its own in-house coding agents instead of relying solely on foreign AI tools if it wants to retain its competitive edge in software services, IndiaAI Mission CEO and Additional Secretary at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) Abhishek Singh said on 5 February.
Speaking virtually at a pre-summit conclave organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry, Singh warned that India’s vast IT workforce is already facing pressure from low-cost AI coding tools.
“When our entry-level software engineers are competing with $20 bots, how do we position ourselves?” he said, adding that the industry must rethink how it builds talent and technology in the age of AI.
Singh pointed at India’s largest IT firms, asking whether they should continue depending on global platforms or create their own systems.
"Do we rely on Cursor AI or GitHub Copilot? Or should we build our own coding agent? Especially with our major companies like TCS, Infosys, having so much of coding expertise over the years. Can we build up a coding agent which is in-house, which is not dependent on, which does not depend on transferring our capability to foreign service providers, to the foreign agents?”
He said the objective should be to ensure that AI tools enhance Indian developers rather than replace them. “How do we ensure that these tools that are there available today, whether from Anthropic or from any other platform, are seen as an add-on to the coding agents or the human software agents that we have? And how can we ensure that our software developers become better versions of themselves?”
Singh also outlined India’s ambition to move beyond traditional IT outsourcing into emerging areas such as agentic AI and physical AI. “Can we become the primary country to source services for AI transformation? Can we become the prime service providers for agentic AI? Can we become the prime service providers as we move into physical AI?”
Singh also predicted that robots could soon become commonplace in households. “Within the next 3 to 5 years, just like every family thinks of having a car… they might think of having an automated assistant in the form of a robot,” he said, urging India to explore domestic robotics manufacturing.
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India must develop its own in-house coding agents instead of relying solely on foreign AI tools if it wants to retain its competitive edge in software services, IndiaAI Mission CEO and Additional Secretary at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) Abhishek Singh said on 5 February.
Speaking virtually at a pre-summit conclave organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry, Singh warned that India’s vast IT workforce is already facing pressure from low-cost AI coding tools.
“When our entry-level software engineers are competing with $20 bots, how do we position ourselves?” he said, adding that the industry must rethink how it builds talent and technology in the age of AI.
Singh pointed at India’s largest IT firms, asking whether they should continue depending on global platforms or create their own systems.
"Do we rely on Cursor AI or GitHub Copilot? Or should we build our own coding agent? Especially with our major companies like TCS, Infosys, having so much of coding expertise over the years. Can we build up a coding agent which is in-house, which is not dependent on, which does not depend on transferring our capability to foreign service providers, to the foreign agents?”
He said the objective should be to ensure that AI tools enhance Indian developers rather than replace them. “How do we ensure that these tools that are there available today, whether from Anthropic or from any other platform, are seen as an add-on to the coding agents or the human software agents that we have? And how can we ensure that our software developers become better versions of themselves?”
Singh also outlined India’s ambition to move beyond traditional IT outsourcing into emerging areas such as agentic AI and physical AI. “Can we become the primary country to source services for AI transformation? Can we become the prime service providers for agentic AI? Can we become the prime service providers as we move into physical AI?”
Singh also predicted that robots could soon become commonplace in households. “Within the next 3 to 5 years, just like every family thinks of having a car… they might think of having an automated assistant in the form of a robot,” he said, urging India to explore domestic robotics manufacturing.
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