India AI Impact Summit: India must shift from AI consumers to creators; literacy levels remain low, says Kore.ai’s Raj Koneru

India AI Impact Summit 2026 | India’s ambition to become a global “agentic force” in artificial intelligence will depend less on adopting tools and more on building them, a transition that requires a major overhaul in education and skills, according to enterprise AI platform Kore.ai Founder and Chief Executive Officer Raj Koneru.

Speaking to Business Today at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Koneru said most people use AI passively rather than actively creating with it.

“Most people use it as a consumer, not as a creator. So the education level and enablement are programs that need to be more adopted. Not only at the professional level, but all the way from schools,” he said.

Koneru warned that India’s AI literacy remains insufficient for the scale of the required transformation, calling for large-scale efforts to train professionals across sectors.

“The government should educate more engineers, doctors and professionals on a large scale. I think the education level is relatively low,” he said.

He argued that artificial intelligence should be treated as a foundational discipline within the education system rather than a specialised skill.

“It should become part of the curriculum, much like math or science, because this is the future,” Koneru added. “Everybody needs to know not just how to consume AI, but how to create with AI.”

Coding jobs will change, not disappear

On concerns about job losses, particularly in entry-level IT roles, Koneru said automation will reshape work rather than eliminate it entirely.

“A large part of coding, as we know it today, will get replaced… but I think the skill set is going to change,” he said. “It is going to create more of a specification of what needs to be coded, basically. So the skill set is going to change from actually coding to instructing AI how to code and then testing what has been coded.”

His remarks come amid growing debate within India’s technology sector over whether generative AI could erode the labour-intensive outsourcing model.

From services hub to application powerhouse

Koneru also pushed back against the view that India’s primary role in AI will remain service delivery, arguing instead that the country’s strength lies in building applications at scale.

“India’s biggest advantage is human capital. AI needs to be created. It doesn’t create on its own,” he said. “Being able to build applications is the biggest strength of India.”

He described the opportunity not as a traditional services market but as a vast platform for AI-driven products and solutions.

“I don’t think it is a services market. I think it is an AI application mountain, which India can excel in,” Koneru said.

Kore.ai’s orchestration approach

Hyderabad-based Kore.ai, founded in 2014, integrates with more than 70 model providers, including systems from OpenAI, Anthropic and Mistral.

“We are the earliest and the only AI platform that is completely built out of India,” Koneru said. “Right from 2014, we have built our platform in Hyderabad. The value of building out of India is really the human capital.”

Instead of building large language models, Kore.ai focuses on orchestrating them to power enterprise workflows and autonomous agents.

“We aren’t building foundational models; we are building the brains that run the enterprise,” Koneru said. 

He concluded that India’s position in the global market is not just about providing AI services, but also about leading the development of AI applications.

Koneru said, “I don’t think this is a services market; I believe it is an AI application mountain that India can excel in.”