India needs to significantly increase its investment in Artificial Intelligence (AI) beyond the current USD 1.2 billion to align with global standards, while the Union Budget’s 20-year tax holiday for foreign companies provides “foundational infrastructure” for expanding AI capabilities in the country, a senior NVIDIA executive said on Wednesday.
Shanker Trivedi, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Business at NVIDIA, highlighted the scale of India’s opportunity, noting that of the 2,000 global corporations, 1,800 operate major global capability centres (GCCs) in India, collectively employing over 2 million people — a number expected to rise to 3 million.
"Everyone of these global capability centres needs their own local AI factory from which they will take their data, their business processes, their IP, and convert it into intelligence. And, so, this (Budget announcement) is a very big opportunity here in India. And as we describe, this is foundational infrastructure," Trivedi said at the AI Impact Summit 2026.
In the Union Budget 2026-27, the government announced a 20-year tax holiday until 2047 for foreign companies procuring data centre services in India, addressing concerns over the taxation of their global income by Indian authorities.
Under the new policy, whether a global company establishes its own data centre in India or procures services from an Indian provider, the tax treatment will remain identical, ensuring a complete level-playing field.
Referring to India’s broader AI ambitions, Trivedi described the current USD 1.2-billion investment in AI infrastructure as commendable and efficiently utilised, but inadequate in comparison to overall infrastructure spending.
"But to put it into context, the overall investment per year in core infrastructure in India is now of the order of USD 150 billion a year. And we need that infrastructure. We need the roads, bridges, railways, high speed train, airports, seaports, electricity grid, and of course, that goes into USD 150 billion a year.
"But the amount being invested at USD 1.2 billion for the AI mission is still insufficient to actually create that population scale AI and put India on the manufacturing map, on the services map, not just for India in India, but for India, into the world. So I hope that we will be able to, as the economy grows, put more investment into this AI infrastructure," Trivedi added.
NVIDIA currently dominates the global GPU market — chipsets that are critical to building and scaling AI ecosystems — owing to the high processing speeds of its hardware.
In March 2024, the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the national-level IndiaAI Mission with a budget outlay of Rs 10,371.92 crore.
The IndiaAI Mission seeks to build a comprehensive AI ecosystem by catalysing innovation through strategic programmes and partnerships spanning both public and private sectors.
