Now Reading: Nilekani Sees Small Businesses Driving India’s Future Job Growth
-
01
Nilekani Sees Small Businesses Driving India’s Future Job Growth
Nilekani Sees Small Businesses Driving India’s Future Job Growth
Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani said large companies could become net job losers as artificial intelligence and automation break organised work into tasks that are easier to automate. Speaking at the NCAER India…
The Story in Brief
Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani said large companies could become net job losers as artificial intelligence and automation break organised work into tasks that are easier to automate. Speaking at the NCAER India Policy Forum, he said millions of small businesses and startups would drive employment because their workforces are harder to automate.
Nilekani said India could have one million startups by 2035, compared with about 1,50,000 now. He called for simpler regulation, easier access to finance and markets, and wider use of platforms such as the RBI’s Account Aggregator and ONDC. The Times of India also reported his view that India could gain from applied AI by making it useful to a billion people, despite limited strength in chips, infrastructure and large language models.
The Indian Opinion
The easy narrative that AI will either destroy all jobs or solve India’s employment problem is too crude. Small firms may absorb workers, but many are informal, fragile and short of capital. Large companies can also create new roles if productivity gains lead to expansion. The real test is whether new enterprises produce stable incomes, portable benefits and measurable net job growth, rather than just more registrations by 2035.
Sources (2): rediff.com, timesofindia.indiatimes.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the 2 sources linked above.
Updated: this story now draws on 2 sources.
