India could become the world’s AI inferencing capital as $20 bots challenge entry-level engineers, says Abhishek Singh

India wants to position itself as the world’s hub for artificial intelligence (AI) inference and agentic services, as automation begins to disrupt traditional software jobs and puts pressure on the country’s $250-billion IT industry.

“We have the potential to become the inferencing capital of the world,” said Abhishek Singh, Additional Secretary at Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and chief executive of the IndiaAI Mission, speaking at a Confederation of Indian Industry event.  

At the heart of India’s strategy is how its software workforce adapts to rapid advances in AI. Singh warned that entry-level engineers now face unprecedented competition from automated tools.

“When our entry level software engineers are competing with $20 bots, how do we position ourselves?” he said. “How do we ensure that these tools that are available today… are seen as an add-on to the coding agents or the human software agents that we have?”

India, long known as the world’s IT services back office, must now reinvent itself as a provider of higher-value AI transformation, Singh said. 

“Can we try to ensure that we become the primary country to source services for AI3 transformation? Can we become the prime service providers for agentic AI? Can we become the prime service providers as we move into physical AI?”

He urged large Indian tech firms to consider building their own in-house coding agents rather than relying entirely on overseas platforms. “Do we rely on Cursor AI or GitHub Copilot? Or should we build our own coding agent?” Singh said, pointing to the decades of expertise at companies such as TCS and Infosys.

“Can we build a coding agent which is in-house...and ensure that we retain our advantage when it comes to AI scaling and when it comes to providing AI services?”

Union Budget 2026 announcements, including tax exemptions and simplified safe-harbour rules for data centres, are already drawing investment from global cloud providers, Singh said, adding that India could emerge as a global data-centre base alongside its AI talent pool.