AI Appreciation Day 2026: Trust and infrastructure emerge as the next frontier for AI, say experts

Sumed Marwaha, Managing Director, AHEAD India

AI is rapidly becoming foundational to how enterprises modernize and deliver business outcomes. Its true value, however, depends not just on the intelligence of the models, but on the infrastructure, governance and engineering that support them.

At AHEAD, we believe AI creates the greatest impact when it is built on a modern technology foundation that helps organizations innovate with confidence, simplify operations and accelerate transformation. On World AI Appreciation Day, we recognize that the future of enterprise AI will be shaped not only by what AI can do, but by how ready organizations are to put it into practice.

Nilesh Aggarwal, CEO IJCP & Founder Medtalks

AI is reshaping healthcare across its entire value chain — from accelerating evidence generation and real-world data analysis to how medical knowledge is discovered, consumed, and applied by clinicians and patients. At IJCP Group, we see this play out across our own businesses: in medical communications and HCP education, in real-world evidence work, and in patient-facing health information. The opportunity is real — faster access to evidence, more personalised learning for healthcare professionals, and more understandable health information for patients. But healthcare is a domain where speed can never come at the cost of accuracy.

The real challenge is ensuring AI is trained on credible, evidence-based sources and that every output is guided by clinical oversight and ethical responsibility. We see AI as an enabler that strengthens healthcare learning, evidence generation, and patient education — while keeping doctors and scientific rigour firmly at the centre. As we mark AI Appreciation Day, it is worth recognising AI for expanding access to knowledge, while reaffirming that its greatest value lies in supporting informed human decisions and building greater trust across the healthcare ecosystem.

Manoj Kapoor, President and CEO, enGen

As we celebrate AI Appreciation Day, we see AI not as a standalone technology initiative, but as a transformational force shaping the future of enGen Global. At enGen Global, becoming AI-first is not just about adopting new technology—it is about transforming how we think, work and innovate.

We are scaling AI responsibly across our platforms, processes and teams, while maintaining the governance, transparency and human oversight that are essential in healthcare. We believe the future belongs to organizations that can seamlessly bring together human ingenuity and AI at scale, creating a more intelligent, agile and trusted enterprise. 

Nilesh Bhojani, Chief Product and Technology Officer, Seclore

AI Appreciation Day feels like the right moment to be honest about something the industry has been slow to say out loud: the models have delivered. The governance hasn't.

Most enterprises are running AI across their workflows right now. Some knowingly, some not. And the question that keeps coming up — from boards, from regulators, from CISOs — isn't whether AI is useful. It's whether anyone actually knows what it's doing with sensitive data. That's the gap worth talking about today. Not to slow AI down, but because closing that gap is what makes it possible to move faster with confidence.

AI can only be as trustworthy as the data practices behind it. That means knowing what sensitive data your AI systems are touching, controlling what leaves your environment, and being able to show your work when someone asks. Not once a year at audit time. Continuously. That's what we're building at Seclore. And that's what responsible AI adoption looks like in practice — not a policy, not a principle. An Architecture.

Sudharsan Aravamuthan, Head of Systems Engineering, Everpure India

India is entering a defining phase of its AI journey, with organisations moving rapidly from experimentation to embedding AI across core business functions. But scaling AI in India comes with a unique challenge. The country generates nearly 20% of the world's data, yet accounts for only about 3% of global data centre capacity. At the same time, enterprises are managing fragmented data across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, legacy systems, and edge locations.

That's why AI success isn't just about models or compute—it's fundamentally about ensuring data is trusted, governed, secure, and AI-ready. Organisations that invest in strong data foundations will be best positioned to unlock AI's full potential. In the long run, India's competitive advantage in AI won't be defined by the models it builds alone, but by how effectively it manages, governs, secures, and derives value from its data.

Harjiv Singh, Founder & CEO, CambrianEdge.ai

What we're celebrating this year is the recognition that human intelligence must remain at the center. We produce 1.5 million engineers annually, and a growing cohort is thinking in AI-native terms from the start. They're designing systems where machine capability amplifies human judgment, human creativity, human leadership. Yes, only 16% of IT professionals have AI skills.

Yes, AI-related job demand has crossed 1 million roles this year. But that gap is also our opportunity. We have the scale, the talent pipeline, and engineers who can build AI the right way from the beginning. The ones who understand that every system they create should make humans better at what only humans can do. That's the future we're building.

Dr Sandeep Kumar, Chief Executive, L&T Semiconductor Technologies (LTSCT)

World AI Appreciation Day is a reminder that the global AI race is no longer won by algorithms alone, it is won by the strength of a nation's semiconductor and compute ecosystem and the expertise in knowledge and talent it has developed.

As AI workloads grow more specialized across manufacturing, mobility, healthcare and critical infrastructure, customized silicon will be the foundation of secure, high-performance, and energy-efficient intelligence.

India generates nearly a fifth of the world's data yet captures only a fraction of its value. Closing that gap is our defining opportunity: to build a sovereign AI stack rooted in indigenous semiconductor design, trusted compute infrastructure, and world-class engineering talent.

The intelligence economy will be led by the nations that master the full stack, from silicon to systems to software. That is the stack India is building, and the one LTSCT is proud to help design.

Anjaiah Surgi, CTO, AGI Greenpac (Somany Impresa Group)

In glass manufacturing, AI Appreciation Day isn't a slogan for us- it's already running on the line, in real time. At AGI Greenpac, AI has moved straight into the production process itself, computer vision systems now inspect every bottle for choke bore diameter, height, and colour match against customer samples, catching defects the human eye would miss at line speed. On the planning side, our AI-driven production scheduling handles demand and capacity constraints across plants with far fewer disruptions. We've also piloted dynamic compressor control purely for energy savings in our eco-plants.

We've even used VR to train operators on IS-machine handling making training safer, faster, and causing zero production downtime. The next stretch involves extending that same rigor upstream: AI-led receivables automation, and multi-agent systems for sourcing and vendor management that can cut procurement cycle time in half while improving compliance. For a glass and packaging business, the real opportunity over the next few years isn't AI as an add-on it's AI embedded in every quality checkpoint and every plant decision, so consistency and yield improve continuously rather than through one-off projects.

Hemant Tiwari, Managing Director and Vice President for India and SAARC, Hitachi Vantara

Artificial Intelligence has evolved from experimentation to enterprise-scale execution, making AI Appreciation Day an opportunity to recognise the critical role of data foundations in enabling this transformation. Our 2025 State of Data Infrastructure Report is based on a global survey of 1,244 business and IT leaders across 15 countries, including 104 respondents from India. It found that 89 percent of Indian organisations have either widely adopted AI or consider it essential to their operations, compared with a global average of 69 percent.

This momentum is being matched by strong national ambition, with India's AI ecosystem continuing to gain scale and depth. At Hitachi Vantara, our focus is on helping organisations unify fragmented data estates and build governance into their systems by design, ensuring AI outcomes are consistent, secure, and dependable at scale. India's data infrastructure maturity today will shape how confidently the country scales AI in the years ahead.

Sudharsan Aravamuthan, Head of Systems Engineering, Everpure India

India is entering a defining phase of its AI journey, with organisations moving rapidly from experimentation to embedding AI across core business functions. But scaling AI in India comes with a unique challenge. The country generates nearly 20% of the world's data, yet accounts for only about 3% of global data centre capacity. At the same time, enterprises are managing fragmented data across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, legacy systems, and edge locations.

That's why AI success isn't just about models or compute—it's fundamentally about ensuring data is trusted, governed, secure, and AI-ready. Organisations that invest in strong data foundations will be best positioned to unlock AI's full potential. In the long run, India's competitive advantage in AI won't be defined by the models it builds alone, but by how effectively it manages, governs, secures, and derives value from its data.