New Delhi, February 22 The power of technology companies is shifting from software to AI models trained using proprietary data, according to a top official of InMobi, India's first unicorn.
This statement comes at a time when the Indian government is supporting open-source models for developing sovereign AI models, and there is debate about the future of the country's IT firms.
"The future of technology companies lies in the fact that software is no longer the primary source of power. The power is moving towards proprietary models that you are essentially training using proprietary data. Therefore, even the most advanced models are becoming commoditized. The value lies in the models that use proprietary data," Tewari said.
He added that India will need to develop its own proprietary vertical models for its region, on top of the advanced models.
ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Anthropic Claude 3 are some of the leading advanced models that several companies are using to provide AI-based services.
At the summit, Indian startup Sarvam unveiled an advanced model that positions itself as a competitor to other global advanced models.
InMobi claims that its mobile advertising services reach 2 billion users across more than 150 countries, and it has developed its own agentic commerce system that operates on more than 100 million devices globally, including mobile lock screens and smart TVs.
Any AI model needs a large user base to fine-tune and train itself. The larger the data sets involved, the better it becomes.
Tewari said that there used to be an advantage earlier of Western internet technologies, but that advantage is no longer present.
"Now, it's a level playing field. We can actually test products on a much larger number of consumers and then make them global. That's our big advantage. We can build products from here (India) and take them into global enterprises. That advantage never existed before, and I think we have essentially made that happen," he said.
During a presentation at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Tewari said that artificial intelligence could unlock over $3 trillion in incremental economic impact for India by 2047 by fundamentally reshaping how commerce functions.
"We are essentially trying to create commerce models that are trained on proprietary consumer data, which essentially trains those models and makes them different. The world is moving very rapidly. What you saw in the last two, three years is no longer valid," Tewari said.
