With the ET AI Awards 2025 jury meeting on the horizon, Abhishek Singh unpacks what it means to build AI that solves for India

As CEO of the IndiaAI Mission and Additional Secretary at MeitY, Abhishek Singh brings a population‑scale, governance‑first lens to the ET AI Awards 2025 jury panel. Ahead of the jury meeting on 28 January 2026, he reflects on what it takes to stand out in a field of India’s most ambitious artificial intelligence (AI) innovations.

For Singh, the value of an award lies not in the ceremony, but in the aftermath. Tasked with one of the most ambitious digital mandates in the world—democratising AI for a population of 1.4 billion—he views the ET…