India is nowhere close to building frontier AI models: Wingify's Paras Chopra

India is nowhere close to building frontier AI models and needs to invest in deep, foundational research if it is to leapfrog in artificial intelligence, said Wingify founder Paras Chopra at the ET AI Awards 2025 on Thursday.

“The compute gap alone is orders of magnitude,” Chopra said, pointing to the vast difference in GPU capacity between the US and India.

Chopra was speaking during a panel discussion titled ‘Build, Borrow, or Burn: The Truth About Models’ with Peeyush Ranjan, founder of Meraki Labs, moderated by ET’s Samidha Sharma.


“Models are lagging indicators of years of research that looked like it was going nowhere,” Chopra said, referencing how companies like OpenAI evolved after researching for years ``before they stumbled upon something’’.

After Wingify, Chopra founded Lossfunk, a lab based out of Bengaluru supporting foundational research in AI.

According to Chopra, India’s biggest constraint is the mindset. “We need to shift from a business mindset to a builder’s mindset — from chasing near-term profit to building the future.”

For Ranjan, the opportunity lies in leapfrogging rather than competing head-on. “You don’t become great on day one. You go down the learning curve by building things deeply relevant to you,” he said.

Ranjan, a former Flipkart CTO and Google veteran, launched a global AI tutor-led edtech, Fermi.ai, in January this year.

“AI is a road-roller flattening advantages. The question is: who can solve messy problems most creatively and move the fastest?’’, he said, suggesting that India should build globally competitive AI products in sectors such as education and healthcare, where it has scale and domain strength.

“The right approach isn’t building for India,” Chopra said. “It’s building world-class products from India.”

On building Indian startups, Chopra said companies and founders should reinvest in research and provide exits, instead of distributing dividends. “The only way to do that is to invest more in fundamental R&D. That work is what changes things 10 years down the line,” he said.