Companies like Optasia leverage mobile phone usage data from telecom partners to provide small loans to millions of unbanked individuals. This model of financial inclusion has created highly valuable "unicorn" companies on the continent.

Instead of directly funding AI data centers, India's national AI mission uses a demand-side strategy. It subsidizes compute access for users like startups and researchers, creating a guaranteed market that incentivizes private companies to build and offer compute capacity competitively.

The democratization of technology via AI shifts the entrepreneurial goalpost. Instead of focusing on creating a handful of billion-dollar "unicorns," the more impactful ambition is to empower millions of people to each build a million-dollar "donkey corn" business, truly broadening economic opportunity.

By eliminating outdated constraints like the six-month activity rule and incorporating time-series data and alternative inputs like rent payments, modern credit scoring models can assess millions of creditworthy individuals, such as military personnel or young people, who were previously unscorable.

Instead of competing to build sovereign AI stacks from the chip up, India's strategic edge is in applying commoditized AI models to its unique, population-scale problems. This leverages the country's deep experience with real-world, large-scale implementation.

Indian startups are carving a competitive niche by focusing on the AI application layer. Instead of building foundational models, their strength lies in developing and deploying practical AI solutions that solve real-world problems, which is where they can effectively compete on a global scale.

For India, "leapfrogging" with AI means overcoming systemic resource shortages. AI acts as a horizontal productivity multiplier, enabling, for example, a limited number of doctors to deliver better healthcare outcomes through AI-powered diagnostics, thus enhancing sectoral capacity without massive infrastructure investment.

Unlike private companies seeking product-market fit within a specific segment, designing digital public infrastructure (DPI) requires a different mindset. The goal is creating a level playing field that enables *everyone* to participate and allows markets to innovate on top.

For the first time, a disruptive technology's most advanced capabilities are available to the public from day one via consumer apps. An individual with a smartphone has access to the same state-of-the-art AI as a top VC or Fortune 500 CEO, making it the most democratic technology in history.