In 2025, Paytm Founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma said India should settle for being the AI use case capital. At Cypher 2026 in Bengaluru, he made the case for something far more ambitious.
Sharma argued that India has spent too long building applications on top of technology developed and owned elsewhere. The problem is we’re unambitious, he said. He then backed his argument with his own money, offering ₹1-2 crore from his personal funds to founders willing to build their own AI models, and said he could increase the amount if enough serious builders came forward.
Use Case Capital Is a Choice, Sharma Says
Sharma began with payments. He recalled predicting years ago that India would become a global benchmark in the field, and said that prediction has held up. But he sees most Indian AI builders working at the application layer rather than further down the stack, where he believes more long-term value will accrue.
To make his point, Sharma drew parallels with earlier technology cycles, comparing telecom equipment makers, network operators, and mobile operating systems. Companies that controlled the underlying technology, he argued, held a fundamentally different position than those building businesses on top of it. He sees a similar pattern now emerging in AI.
Indian companies, he said, have become skilled at building applications on top of models developed elsewhere, while most of the underlying capability remains outside the country. He questioned why Indian builders were operating so far from the core of AI development.
Sharma put the cost of building an AI model at less than $100 million (around ₹964 crore), and pointed to China’s willingness to distill and retrain existing models as a faster path forward. Why should we stay as the IT services capital of the world? Why shouldn’t we build the systems and technology for the world, he questioned.
In his view, India isn’t yet part of the big boy club of AI powers, not because of a lack of resources, but because too few people are ambitious enough to get there.
Owning Models Without Giving Up Foreign AI
Sharma framed his goal as ownership, not isolation. India can continue using foreign models, he said, while also owning some of the underlying capability itself. He was careful to note this isn’t a nationalist argument, and acknowledged that India can’t realistically build frontier models entirely alone. The aim, he said, is for India to have multiple models of its own, rather than leaving the field to a small handful of countries.
Sharma pointed to Paytm as an example of the approach he wants other Indian companies to take. He said the company’s risk engines and fraud systems are built internally, and that it has retrained models specifically for its own requirements. Paytm’s recent AI work includes a 4-billion-parameter model that Sharma has described as an optimised version of a 200-billion-parameter model built for Indian languages, which Paytm runs on its own machines.
Sharma has also said on an earlings call that Paytm will eventually need to become a fully AI-driven company, while its AI Soundbox already responds to merchants in 11 Indian languages. The company is also expanding beyond its internal operations through Paytm Intelligence, a new AI business capable of deploying agents across functions like sales, customer service, and operations.
A Personal Offer, and a Call to Commit
Sharma said he couldn’t commit Paytm’s own money to this effort, since it’s a listed company. The offer, instead, comes entirely from his personal funds. Either come over, join us or build your own and take money from me, he said.
He offered ₹1-2 crore as a starting cheque for founders building their own AI models, and said he could increase that amount if enough serious builders committed to the effort. But Sharma argued that capital isn’t the real constraint holding India back. There is enough capital, enough resources, and enough intention to support that, he said.
The bigger issue, in his view, is the willingness to commit to something difficult over the long term. The ambitious guy commits to it and does not let it go, Sharma said. He also offered Paytm’s distribution network to founders, saying they could use the company’s reach to get their products in front of real users.
You Are the Ecosystem
During the Q&A, the conversation shifted from ambition to jobs and India’s broader AI ecosystem. Asked by a young attendee for a single piece of advice, Sharma kept it simple: Life gives you what you aim for. The problem is we aim very low.
The discussion then turned to AI and jobs. Sharma argued that higher productivity across India’s billion plus population could turn AI into a source of national economic power, rather than framing the technology primarily around the jobs it might replace.
When another attendee argued that India lacks a proper AI ecosystem, Sharma pushed back directly. You are the ecosystem. Everything that you need is inside you, he said.
