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Informist, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – India must shift from being a services-led technology nation to an intellectual property-led powerhouse in the artificial intelligence era, Roshni Nadar Malhotra, HCL Technologies chairperson, said at the India AI Impact Summit Thursday.

 

Addressing the summit, Malhotra said AI represents more than just another technology cycle. "For the first time in history, knowledge itself is being commoditised," she said. The competitive advantage in the AI era will not be computing power alone but "clarity of thinking", she said, noting that "when knowledge becomes abundant, judgment becomes scarce".

 

Positioning the shift as a national strategic moment, she said India must transition "from scale-led growth to intelligence-led growth". For decades, India's technology success was built on scaling services exports, she said, but AI is reshaping that equation. "Services scale with effort. IP scales infinitely," she said, arguing that long-term value in the AI economy will accrue to those who build and own platforms, products, and models rather than simply deploy them.

 

"India must move from being a tech services-led nation to an IP-led nation," she said, calling the transformation economic as well as structural. Malhotra said HCL Technologies is repositioning itself accordingly, evolving "from a people-centric delivery model to an integrated system of software products, intelligent agents, and human expertise delivering outcomes at scale."

 

She highlighted new AI-led service lines, including AI Factory, which designs and manages next-generation AI infrastructure, and Physical AI, which brings intelligence into real-world systems such as robotics and autonomous industrial processes.

 

Tracing the company's legacy, she recalled that it was founded in 1976 as one of India's earliest technology startups and built the country's first indigenous computer by 1978. "HCL was driven by a belief in building, not adopting," she said, adding that the same philosophy must guide India's AI journey.

 

She cautioned that technological acceleration must be matched by responsibility. "The real question is not what AI can do but how responsibly we will deploy it, how inclusively we will scale it, and how wisely we will govern it," she said. "Responsible AI is not a feature, it is a foundation."  End

 

Reported by Pallavi Singhal and Pratiksha

Edited by Rajeev Pai

 

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