Opinion Harnessing AI for systemic change: Can India’s startups solve its urban and environmental crises?

India finds itself in a unique position. Building Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) – from the Aadhaar identity system to the ubiquitous UPI payments network and emerging data-sharing frameworks – has created unprecedented digital rails. Layered onto this is a vast, young population rapidly embracing digital tools, and a vibrant startup ecosystem teeming with technical talent and ambition.

AI represents a technology shift as profound, perhaps, as fire or electricity. An enabler that can accelerate progress across nearly every field, its power demands a bold approach to innovation, pushing boundaries while ensuring safety and equitable benefit. We see this globally with breakthroughs like AlphaFold, which has revolutionised protein structure prediction, dramatically speeding up medical research and drug discovery.

In India, this potential is translating into tangible impact, particularly in healthcare. AI algorithms developed by companies like Google and its partner, Verily Life Sciences, help screen for diabetic retinopathy using simple retina scans. Startups like Niramai are pioneering radiation-free, AI-based breast cancer screening, while others like Qure.ai assist doctors in interpreting medical scans, thereby improving diagnostic accuracy.

Agriculture, the livelihood for a vast majority of India’s population, is another fertile ground: Startups like CropIn deploy AI solutions to provide farmers with actionable insights – predicting yields, detecting diseases early, and optimising resource use based on weather and satellite imagery. Farmonaut offers similar capabilities, leveraging satellite data and AI for personalised farm advice. More than efficiency gains, they are improving livelihoods and enhancing food security.
AI is also proving vital in managing environmental challenges. Forecasting tools like Flood Hub provide crucial early warnings across large parts of India. Efforts to map air quality street-by-street using mobile sensors, like those undertaken in Bengaluru, provide high-resolution data, essential for understanding pollution sources and informing public health strategies.

But can the startup ecosystem, even supercharged by AI, truly solve India’s most daunting systemic problems – the air quality crisis in its cities, urban traffic gridlock, water scarcity, or the complex logistics of a continent-sized economy?
The ecosystem is evolving. Audacious entrepreneurs are already moving beyond urban convenience solutions, and tackling formidable challenges in areas such as space launch vehicles (Skyroot, Agnikul), vital satellite constellations (Pixxel, Dhruva Space, Digantara), advanced robotics (Addverb, CynLR), futuristic mobility solutions (Sarla, ePlane, Blu-J, Ather), and foundational technologies like gene editing (CrisprBits), semiconductors (Mindgrove), and quantum computing (Qnu Labs). Skyroot’s Vikram-S launch, which opened up private space endeavours, and strides in defence tech (ideaForge, EyeRov), signal this shift. Investment is following, with Nasscom reporting a 78 per cent year-on-year funding jump for India’s ~4,000 deep-tech startups, reaching $1.6 billion in 2024, and projections suggesting deep tech could add $1 trillion to India’s GDP by FY30.

However, scaling these promising deep-tech ventures to truly tackle the systemic crises presents immense hurdles beyond clever algorithms. It requires navigating complex policy landscapes – integrating AI insights into urban planning, tackling deeply enmeshed challenges like industrial emissions and agricultural burning alongside technological monitoring – and addressing critical ecosystem gaps. These include the need for substantial patient capital willing to weather longer development cycles, bridging the deep-tech talent gap through focused education reform and overcoming challenges.

The path forward, therefore, demands a concerted symphony of action. For policymakers, the challenge is cultivating fertile ground – implementing supportive frameworks like the National Deep Tech Startup Policy, ensuring access to high-quality datasets and compute power, championing foundational research, reforming education for specialised talent, and critically fostering an environment that encourages bold bets and provides longer-term “hand-holding” for deep-tech ventures. Industry players, including technology providers, must supply foundational elements – responsibly developed AI models, accessible cloud infrastructure, open datasets where possible, and platforms simplifying complexity.

The scale of India’s challenges beckons greater ambition. The invitation is to channel India’s ingenuity, digital rails, and deep-tech momentum towards the truly systemic. Can the next generation of ventures, inspired by space and defence tech pioneers, genuinely move the needle on air quality, water management, sustainable agriculture, or preventative healthcare for millions? This requires ambition matching the scale of the problems, like a “societal moonshot” focus demanding capital and long-term vision.

Like the Green Revolution fundamentally changed India’s trajectory, the country stands at the cusp of a potential deep-tech and AI-driven transformation. Seizing this requires commitment to an enabling climate – stable policies, robust infrastructure, talent development paired with a startup community aiming higher, tackling foundational quality-of-life challenges. The recent surge in deep-tech investment and bold ventures shows the potential is real. By empowering entrepreneurs, investing strategically, and fostering a collaborative ecosystem focused on solving unique, large-scale challenges responsibly, India can improve citizens’ lives and create innovative models needed globally.

The writer is senior programme manager, Google for Startups Accelerator programme