India focuses on GPU subsidies and ‘BharatGen’ to rewrite the AI growth playbook

By Kamal Das, Dean at the Wadhwani Center for Government Digital Transformation (WGDT)

One key takeaway from India Union Budget, is that the government is done treating Artificial Intelligence as a side project. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s 2026-27 blueprint puts AI front and centre, not just as a shiny talking point tucked into the last ten minutes of a Budget speech, but as the actual scaffolding for the country’s next chapter of economic growth. For an ecosystem that has spent years begging for affordable compute and local-language models, this feels welcome.

Cheap GPUs, Finally

The headline number is hard to miss. The IndiaAI Mission is being scaled up to 38,000 GPUs available to startups at roughly ₹65 an hour. That is, by any measure, a dramatic move. Until now, a bootstrapped AI lab in Bengaluru or Hyderabad had to either burn venture money on ...