How building InMobi and Glance shaped Piyush Shah's vision for India's AI future

Piyush Shah, the co-founder of two unicorns, InMobi and Glance, reflects on how India's AI strategy should differ from Silicon Valley or Beijing's approaches. After operating in Silicon Valley, Beijing, and Bengaluru, Shah has come to the conclusion that India's strengths lie in solving real-world problems, mastering distribution, and creating sustainable business models. He emphasizes that the AI race is not a single race but rather distinct strengths emerging in different regions.

The U.S. is inventing AI, while China is industrializing it. Shah argues that India's role is to use AI to improve everyday life for millions, focusing on accessibility rather than pushing technological boundaries or manufacturing dominance. India has successfully created digital public infrastructure that reaches hundreds of millions of users, and Shah believes AI presents a similar opportunity.

He points to examples like AI tutors for education, healthcare advisors, financial coaches, agricultural experts, and multilingual voice interfaces as solutions that combine inclusion with scale. Shah contends that India's competitive advantage lies in democratising AI for the masses rather than building technology for a select few advanced users.

However, Shah also highlights the economics challenge of consumer AI. Traditional software companies worry about customer acquisition costs and lifetime value, but AI companies must contend with inference costs, which directly impact user engagement and scale. Historically, consumer AI companies have not addressed inference CAC effectively, posing a significant barrier to sustainable business models.

While consumer AI attracts significant attention, Shah believes enterprise AI has already demonstrated clear business value. Enterprise AI enables measurable outcomes within weeks, attracting significant investment and generating revenue. Shah notes that the focus of major events like OpenAI has shifted from consumer products to enterprise transformation, with enterprise AI accounting for 70% of their revenue in the coming year.

Distribution remains a crucial moat for AI companies, drawing from Shah's experience at InMobi. He emphasizes that founders often underestimate the importance of distribution, which has been a key factor in InMobi's global success. Shah encourages founders to focus on solving deep, domain-specific workflows, such as manufacturing, warehousing, tax filing, pharmaceutical approvals, and healthcare operations. He believes that measurable outcomes within weeks, rather than months, are increasingly valued by enterprises.