National Technology Day 2026: Tech Leaders on Responsible Innovation for Inclusive Growth

Ankur Kanaglekar, Vice President – India, Thales

On this National Technology Day, Thales celebrates India’s innovation journey and reaffirms its commitment to building a future-ready, Aatmanirbhar Bharat. Through our ‘Make in India, Innovate in India, and Export from India’ strategy, we are advancing capabilities across defence, aerospace, cyber, and digital technologies. With growing R&D investments, engineering centres in Bengaluru and Noida, strong industry-academia collaborations, and over 2400 employees in India, we remain committed to fostering indigenous innovation, resilient technologies, and a skilled talent ecosystem for the future.

Dr. Gayathri Vasudevan, Founder and Chairperson, Sambhav Foundation

In many underserved communities, the digital divide begins long before employment. It begins in classrooms where computer access is limited, in homes where phones are shared or controlled, and in environments where confidence with technology is never actively built. This is why conversations around responsible innovation cannot remain limited to advanced systems and infrastructure alone. They must also include adoption, access, familiarity, confidence, and participation.

Aditya Prabhu, CEO & Co-Founder at Secutech Automation

India does not need innovation for the sake of novelty. It needs technology that simplifies complexity, strengthens infrastructure, and solves real challenges at scale. Whether it is intelligent traffic systems improving emergency response times, integrated command centres strengthening urban safety, or AI-enabled infrastructure helping authorities make faster and more informed decisions, technology must ultimately improve how people experience cities and public systems in their daily lives.

Sumanth Donthi, Founder & Director, Emmvee Technologies Pvt Ltd

I've observed a clear pattern where mid-sized businesses end up operating with outdated processes because modern solutions require either significant capital or heavy reliance on external expertise, both of which are often inaccessible to them. Their constraint itself becomes the catalyst for innovation. The responsibility lies in designing solutions that are economically accessible to them without sacrificing sophistication. The goal is to recognize that solving for these businesses is about building systems that enable competition on equal terms. That's where necessary becomes responsible. Inclusive growth is just the natural outcome of solving these real problems.

Sudhin Mathur, Chief Operating Officer, Xiaomi India

On National Technology Day, we celebrate innovation that doesn’t just add features but adds clarity and purpose to our lives. At Xiaomi, we view AI not as a standalone strategy, but as a core capability - an invisible layer that makes everyday experiences more intuitive and seamless. This shift reflects across our ‘Human × Car × Home’ strategy, where AI-led capabilities move beyond simple connectivity into an intuitive environment that anticipates user needs. By anchoring our technological reach in human-centric purposes, we ensure technology amplifies human potential rather than just automating it. Supported by India’s strengthening electronics manufacturing policies, we are committed to an India-first strategy that deepens this ecosystem, ensuring that as we lead in global technology, we remain focused on purposeful, human-centred innovation.

Prakash Ravindran, CEO & Co-Founder at InstiFi

Technology is now a foundational driver of growth across the digital payments ecosystem. As businesses and consumers rely on real-time financial solutions, building reliable, scalable, and secure systems is essential. For fintech platforms, continuous innovation, strong infrastructure, and responsible deployment of emerging technologies are imperative to deliver consistent user experiences and manage risk. At InstiFI, we embed technology across our platforms and processes to meet the needs of a digital-first economy.

Brijesh Agarwal, CEO of Busy Infotech

On National Technology Day, it’s a good moment to reflect on how dramatically technology has evolved, from a time when accessing business information took weeks to today, where insights are available in seconds. In areas like accounting and GST, technology has played a critical role in simplifying compliance, enabling real-time reconciliation, and reducing manual effort through more integrated, end-to-end platforms. Ultimately, National Technology Day highlights how innovation is not just improving efficiency, but empowering Indian MSMEs with smarter, trusted, and future-ready business management solutions.

Amit Relan, CEO and Co-founder of mFilterIt

National Technology Day is not just a celebration of innovation, it is a reminder that technology carries the responsibility to build systems that are intelligent, resilient, and fundamentally trustworthy. In today’s digital economy, innovation cannot be measured only by speed or scale, it must also be measured by the integrity it enables and the problems it solves before they impact businesses and consumers. At mFilterIt, we believe the future belongs to organizations that use technology with foresight and responsibility.

Parag Khurana, Country Manager for India, Barracuda Networks

National Technology Day is an opportunity to not only celebrate India’s impressive digital progress, but also acknowledge how organisations can build resilience in an increasingly complex threat environment. To start, organisations should focus on strengthening visibility across their environments, securing key entry points like email and identity, and ensuring they can respond and recover quickly when incidents occur. At the same time, as AI becomes embedded across business operations, organisations must take steps to safeguard its use.

Dr Sanjay Katkar, Joint Managing Director at Quick Heal Technologies

On National Technology Day, we applaud India's remarkable advancements in science, innovation, and digital transformation from indigenous technological breakthroughs to globally recognised digital public infrastructure changing how citizens, businesses, and governments function. Now technology is so intertwined in almost every aspect of our lives, which makes it imperative to ensure the security of our digital ecosystem. Today, as cyberattacks grow in scale and sophistication, we are strengthening our commitment through AI-powered, Made-in-India innovations across both Quick Heal and Seqrite, helping consumers, enterprises, and institutions use technology with greater confidence, and control.