AIM Print December 2025

The December 2025 edition of AIM Print captures India at a defining moment in its AI and technology journey. Across data centres, global capability centres, startups, policy debates, and frontier research, the edition documents a country moving fast, but not always evenly, as it tries to convert scale and ambition into durable value.

At the centre of this edition is a recurring tension. India is generating data, talent, and experimentation at global scale, yet the systems that turn these into long-term advantage remain under strain. From infrastructure bottlenecks to governance gaps, from AI hype cycles to grounded enterprise realities, the stories in this issue examine where momentum is real and where it is still fragile.

The cover story, India’s Data Centre Gold Rush, written by Supreeth Koundinya, anchors the edition. India now generates roughly 20 percent of global data but stores only about 3 percent locally. That imbalance is driving a wave of hyperscale investment from companies such as Google, Digital Connexion, Reliance Industries, Brookfield, Digital Realty, Tata Consultancy Services, NTT DATA, and Sify Infinit Spaces.

The story tracks how policy mandates like RBI’s data localisation rules, SEBI regulations, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act are accelerating in-country storage. Executives including Amit Agrawal of Techno Digital, Anil Nama of CtrlS Datacenters, and MP Vijay Kumar of Sify explain why power availability, subsea cable landings, and state-level incentives are reshaping where data centres are built.

Yet the article also asks harder questions. Can India scale AI-ready infrastructure without repeating the environmental and resource stress seen in Bengaluru. Can Tier-2 cities like Mangaluru, Hubballi, Mysuru, Panvel, and Siruseri develop ecosystems, not just server farms.

This theme continues in Smruthi Nadig’s Data Centres Seek New Homes Beyond Bengaluru, where voices such as Priyank Kharge, Rahul Takkallapally of Bharat Cloud, Amin Habibi of VergeCloud, Vinod Subramanian and Soumil Gupta of Invest India highlight the growing importance of edge computing, water security, and local demand creation.

GCCs emerge as one of the most closely examined institutions in this issue. In ROI Keeps GCCs Awake At Night, Shalini Mondal reports that while over 90 percent of GCCs have piloted or scaled AI, nearly 72 percent still lack a structured ROI framework.

Leaders such as Julie Sweet of Accenture, Karthik Padmanabhan of Zinnov, Saurabh Sharma of ProHance, Sagar PV of Mindsprint, Alouk Kumar of Inductus Group, and Monica Pirgal of Bhartiya Converge argue that the era of experimentation is over. GCCs are now expected to deliver measurable outcomes across productivity, innovation, and revenue, not just cost savings.

The companion piece, The Great IP Escape, deepens the debate by asking who owns the innovation produced inside India’s 1,700+ GCCs. Voices including Sridhar Vembu of Zoho, Ashutosh Sharma of Forrester, Sunil Padmanabh, and Namita Adavi of Zinnov point out that while India is filing more AI patents than ever, slow approvals and tax complexity still push companies to register IP abroad.

Together, these stories frame GCCs as no longer peripheral. They are now central to India’s innovation economy, but only if governance, incentives, and execution mature in step.

In The World Chases AGI, IndiaAI Is Still Building Pillars, Siddharth Jindal examines the gap between global frontier labs and India’s national AI mission. While companies like Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Meta are shipping new models at breakneck speed, IndiaAI remains focused on foundational infrastructure.

Abhishek Singh of the IndiaAI Mission outlines progress across compute, datasets, and safety, including support for Sarvam AI’s sovereign LLM and BharatGen’s models such as Param, Shrutam, and Patram. Critics like Sanchit Vir Gogia of Greyhound Research and Jacob Joseph of CleverTap argue that India needs speed, patient capital, and execution clarity, not just policy frameworks.

This tension between ambition and velocity runs through the edition, reflecting a broader national challenge.

Several long-form features focus on companies trying to make AI operational rather than aspirational.

Mohit Pandey’s profile of Boris Levine, CTO of StoneX Group, explores how regulated enterprises adopt AI cautiously. Levine discusses why productivity gains matter less than process redesign, why context matters more than raw model power, and why India’s engineering talent in Pune and Bengaluru is central to StoneX’s future.

In Celonis Wants to Free the Process, Pandey reports from Celosphere 2025, where Alexander Rinke, Carsten Thoma, Kaushik Mitra, and Alex Hill explain how process intelligence underpins enterprise AI. Partners and customers including IBM, Accenture, Microsoft, Oracle, AWS, Deloitte, Snowflake, McKinsey, TCS, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Mercedes-Benz, and Vinmar appear as examples of AI grounded in operational reality.

On the startup front, Smruti S profiles Orbo AI and founder Manoj Shinde, detailing how the Magic Mirror and contextual search are reshaping beauty retail through computer vision, AR, and zero-party data. The piece shows how AI startups are increasingly judged on measurable impact rather than novelty.

India Becomes Japan’s Venture Lab highlights cross-border capital flows, featuring investors such as Nao Murakami of Incubate Fund Asia, Jay Krishnan of Beyond Next Ventures, Emmanuel Selva Roya of the Mizuho India Japan Study Centre, and companies spanning fintech, deep tech, semiconductors, and AI infrastructure.

Ankush Das’s The Myth of the Self-Coding Agent and The Right to Code Unassisted cut through agentic AI hype. Developers and leaders including Namanyay Goel of Giga AI, Brijesh Patel of SNDK Corp, Neeti Sharma of TeamLease Digital, and Liu Tang of TiDB argue that AI is a multiplier, not a replacement. Human judgement, governance, and context remain non-negotiable.

This realism is echoed in Mira Murati Ends GPU Babysitting, where Supreeth Koundinya examines Thinking Machines Lab’s Tinker API. Researchers such as Tyler Griggs of UC Berkeley and Sachin Dharashivkar of AthenaAgent describe how abstraction and infrastructure automation can accelerate research without centralising power inside a few labs.

The edition closes with The Last Word, adapted from a conversation with Dr Lilian Pintea of the Jane Goodall Institute, reflecting on AI as a tool that must remain grounded in human values, community impact, and stewardship.

Across nearly 100 pages, the December 2025 AIM Print edition documents India’s AI story in full complexity. It is not a victory lap, nor a warning bell. It is a snapshot of a system learning, correcting, and recalibrating in real time. The message is clear. India’s future in AI will not be decided by scale alone, but by how thoughtfully it builds the structures that turn capability into lasting advantage.

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