A historic turning point for AI ecosystem: Zithara.AI

The founders of Hyderabad-based retail AI platform Zithara.AI have described the Union Budget 2026–27 as a historic inflection point that firmly positions India on the path to becoming a global leader in artificial intelligence and deep technology.

Varun Kashyap and Sridevi Reddy, co-founders of Zithara.AI, said the Budget presents a clear, investment-backed roadmap that moves India from being an AI aspirant to an AI powerhouse, with a strong focus on sovereign AI infrastructure, research, capital access and talent development.

Calling the Budget a strategic declaration rather than a routine fiscal exercise, Varun Kashyap said the tenfold increase in allocation to Rs2,000 crore for the IndiaAI Mission, particularly for sovereign AI models and critical GPU procurement, directly addresses one of the biggest challenges faced by deep-tech startups—access to affordable, high-performance computing. He noted that the move effectively creates strategic digital infrastructure essential for innovation.

Highlighting the Budget’s focus on AI infrastructure, Sridevi Reddy said national-level GPU procurement and publicly supported AI compute grids would significantly reduce processing costs for data-intensive companies. She said this would enable platforms like Zithara.AI to train advanced, India-first retail AI models faster and at a fraction of current costs, making predictive analytics and hyper-personalisation accessible to a much larger base of retailers.

The founders also welcomed the announcement of a new Deep Tech Fund and the establishment of 80 IndiaAI Labs, calling it a major step towards bridging the gap between research and commercialisation. Kashyap said the initiatives create a strong public-private R&D pipeline by enabling collaboration with academic institutions while providing patient capital to scale breakthrough innovations, thereby de-risking deep-tech product development.