India, Feb. 10 -- From being the world's back office to becoming a front-runner in the global economy, India's technology story has been shaped by scale. Now, as one of the fastest adopters of artificial intelligence, the country has earned its place at the global tech table.

But the journey doesn't end there. In fact, it is just the beginning. According to the Bharat AI Startups Report 2026, published by Inc42 in collaboration with Google, India's competitive edge in AI is unlikely to come from frontier research alone, but from execution. Building, integrating and scaling AI in real-world use cases is where Indian innovation is expected to stand out.

The early signals are already visible. Since 2020, Indian AI startups have raised over...