'India still needs to deliver broadband to homes', says Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

With the announcement of the largest-ever collaboration in India's Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry, Nvidia has partnered with Reliance Industries to build AI infrastructure in the country. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, during a closed door media session spoke extensively about India's growing influence on AI globally.

Discussing India’s gaming market, Huang said, “The next generation of video games will largely be made possible through generative AI. You can use generative AI in video games to create amazing worlds that are much more cost-effective. AI can also serve as your chatbot, so in the future, all the characters in video games will be able to talk to each other because they're smart.”

Huang added, “For the game industry to really take off in India, the population's ability to enjoy video games has to grow. One challenge is that most games today require broadband, and India still needs to deliver broadband to homes.”

He continued, “My understanding is that the progress of broadband access is improving rapidly, particularly through wireless broadband. There are many talented programmers in India working with generative AI, and with these factors combined, India has the potential to become a very successful gaming market.”

On the Reliance-Nvidia Partnership

Nvidia will supply the computing power needed to build a cloud AI infrastructure platform, while Reliance’s Jio unit will manage the infrastructure and oversee customer engagement.

Speaking about the partnership, Huang said, “This will be a large-scale initiative, and we’re going to work with Reliance to help them build it. We will establish an innovation centre so that Reliance engineers can use India’s technology to create an AI platform. This will enable them to develop applications that Reliance can offer to consumers in India. There will be three layers: the infrastructure layer, the technology layer, and the AI application layer.”

Huang further noted, “The Hindi LLM (large language model) is a project we’ve already collaborated on with several companies, and it will be open-sourced. It will effectively become the operating system of AI in India. They’re developing applications for the local market, building the infrastructure, providing energy, and creating services here in India.”

India as a Chip Manufacturing Hub

Companies like TCS, Tata Communications, L&T Tech, and Netweb Technologies have announced collaborations with Nvidia. Meanwhile, Nvidia's existing partner and NSE-listed E2E Networks became the first company to bring NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPUs to the Indian market, enabling businesses to take on more complex AI models and drive innovation across startups, MSMEs and large businesses.

Huang emphasized the importance of India developing its own AI capabilities locally rather than just providing labor for software development done elsewhere.

Nvidia’s chips are designed at their centres in Bengaluru, Pune, and Hyderabad. Huang remarked, “India has the intellectual capital needed. That’s why so many of the world’s capability centres are located here.”

“You have the data, energy, and infrastructure. You have the essential ingredients to harvest raw data and transform it into intelligence,” he added. “There are millions of Indians who will appreciate using Hindi on their phones, everywhere in the world. That intelligence should be created and manufactured here in India.”

Nvidia CEO Praises AI-Savvy PM Modi

Huang recalled that during their first meeting about six years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited him to address the Indian cabinet about AI. Huang was surprised by the request, as AI wasn’t yet a widely discussed topic at the time. He noted that Modi wanted to discuss AI infrastructure and its critical role in national development.

“The thing I truly admire is that when I first met Modi ji, about six years ago, he asked me to address his cabinet on AI. I was surprised because it was the first time any national leader had asked me to do so. It was long before AI became a major topic of discussion,” Huang said.

Huang also met with PM Modi during a roundtable conference in New York this past September.

Nvidia’s Revenue and India’s Role in AI

Nvidia’s operations in India have experienced steady growth, with revenues tripling since FY18, and the company is projected to surpass $500 million in the current fiscal year. Nvidia currently operates four engineering centres in India, located in Gurugram, Hyderabad, Pune, and Bengaluru.

Discussing the company’s revenue, Huang said, “India’s contribution to Nvidia’s overall revenue is still relatively small today, but we believe it has the potential to become enormous. The IT industry in India, which began 60 years ago, has traditionally focused on software development running on CPUs and outsourced coding. But the future, I believe, will be in India’s development of AI. India presents a huge business opportunity for us, and I am optimistic about what lies ahead.”