ET AI Awards & Conclave 2025: Meet the Leadership Award winners shaping India’s AI decade

It was a wrap at ET AI Awards & Conclave 2025, marking a successful inaugural edition on February 26, 2026, in Bengaluru, recognising leaders and organisations building India’s artificial intelligence (AI) stack, advancing population-scale deployments, steering innovation at a young age, and last but not least, being changemakers in the global AI arena.

Designed as both a strategic forum and a celebration of excellence, the ET AI Awards & Conclave honoured individuals and enterprises that are moving AI from experimentation to large-scale implementation. As AI becomes central to business transformation and national competitiveness, the platform acknowledged leaders shaping governance frameworks, building foundational technologies and scaling AI-powered solutions globally. It is in this spirit that the first-ever ET AI Awards celebrated the winners who led early adoption of AI, and whose bold strategies and vision are ensuring that India’s AI arc remains grounded in Indian realities, while championing home-grown solutions and building robust pathways to secure indigenous AI talent, and, last but not least, Indian technologists who have made the nation proud on the global stage.

The Leadership Awards emerged from relentless research and rigour, with a three-step evaluation process, backed by Ernst & Young (EY) as Knowledge Partner, sifted over 1,000 nominations under an esteemed jury that amplified Economic Times’ editorial push to unearth true leaders. Together, these efforts sought to reward tangible shifts, from faster discovery cycles and safer systems to scaled inclusion.


The ET AI Awards 2025 had Dr. Vishal Sikka, Founder and CEO of Vianai Systems Inc. as the Jury Chair, and joined by Abhishek Singh, IAS, Additional Secretary at MeitY and CEO of IndiaAI Mission; Naveen Tewari, Co-Founder and CEO of InMobi and Glance; Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder, Group CEO and Executive Vice-Chairman of Fractal, and Nasscom Vice Chairperson; Sharad Sanghi, CEO of Neysa Networks and Chairman of NTT GDC India; Darren Mowry, VP Global Startups at Google Cloud; Prukalpa Sankar, Co-Founder of Atlan; Sandhya Devanathan, VP & Head of India and Southeast Asia at Meta; and Kirthiga Reddy, CEO and Co-Founder of OptimizeGEO.ai & Verix.io.

Here’s the complete list of winners of the ET AI Awards 2025 in the Leadership category:
AI for India Leader:
Vivek Raghavan, Co-founder, Sarvam AI

AI Entrepreneur of the Year:
Naveen Tewari, Founder and CEO, InMobi and Glance

AI Team of the Year:
Clinical AI Team, Qure.ai

AI Technologist of the Year:
Pratyush Kumar, Co-founder, Sarvam AI

AI Woman Leader of the Year:
Irina Ghose, Managing Director, India, Anthropic

AI Young Leader of the Year (Under 30)
(a) Anirudh Sharma, Founder and CEO, Digantara,
(b) Rahul Rawat, Co-founder and COO, Digantara
(c) Tanveer Ahmed, Co-founder and CTO, Digantara

AI Business Leader of the Year, Srikanth Velamakanni, Whole-time Director and Group Chief Executive and Executive Vice-Chairman, Fractal

Global AI Leadership (Indian) Awards
a) Winner of Global Young AI Leader (Indian) – Aman Sanger, Co-founder, Cursor
b) Winner of Global AI Technologist (Indian) – Rahul Patil, CTO, Anthropic
c) Winner of Global AI Business Leader (Indian) – Jay Puri, EVP Worldwide Field Operations, NVIDIA

The diversity of this year’s leadership winners reflects the breadth of India’s AI momentum, from foundational research and frontier model development to enterprise integration and global commercial scale. The event underscored that AI in India is entering a decisive phase, where infrastructure, talent, and governance will determine long-term competitiveness.
Together, these leaders represent the shift from AI experimentation to institutionalised innovation, positioning India as a force to reckon with.

The ET AI Conclave & Awards 2025 has L&T Finance as the NBFC partner, Snowflake as the AI Data Cloud Centre, EY as the Evaluation Partner, and T-Hub as the Ecosystem Partner, and is driven by BYD, with Indri as the celebration partner and Zoho as the Technology Partner. Vahdam India, Vaaree, Natch, and Andamen are the event’s gifting partners.