18/08/2026
There's a race going on to build the biggest AI in the world. India isn't winning it. And that might be completely fine.
Here's the thing nobody really says out loud. Think about who actually needs AI in this country.
A farmer in Vidarbha wanting to know if his crop insurance covers this season's damage. In Marathi. A health worker in a village clinic filling out forms on a โน7,000 phone with two bars of signal on a good day.
For both of them, those giant AI models sitting in data centres abroad are basically useless. Too slow when the network is bad. Too expensive to run at scale. And honestly, not very good in Marathi to begin with.
Now compare that to a small AI model. It runs directly on the phone itself, no internet needed. Costs a tiny fraction to operate. And because it's small and focused, it can actually be trained properly on one Indian language instead of being just okay at fifty.
What surprised us is how much of this is already happening. India's AI mission has funded 20 home-grown models, and 8 of them are small on purpose. Aadhaar services are already running voice interaction in 10 languages on completely offline systems.
We did this before with Aadhaar and UPI. Not the fanciest version. The one that actually works for everyone, cheaply, at massive scale. And then the world copied it.
Full write-up on our blog if you want the details ๐
https://onclickinnovations.com/blog/small-language-models-india-ai-advantage/