Equinix provides essential hybrid multi-cloud infrastructure for enterprises.
Focusing on AI inferencing ensures fast, local customer responses.
AI can create jobs for those who learn to use it properly.
In an insightful discussion at the India AI Impact Summit, Manoj Paul, Managing Director for Equinix India, shared his vision for the future of digital infrastructure in India. We discussed the role of AI in transforming the future landscape in India, and he emphasised how the true power of AI lies not just in the creation but in accessibility to the common citizen.
SurveyLet’s get a deep dive into what I gathered from our conversation.
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Taking the digital infrastructure to the next-level
First off Mr. Manoj walked me down to what exactly Equinix does. He explained, “We are a co-location service provider. We have 270 plus datacentres across the world. We have datacentres in India, we have 3 datacentres in Mumbai. ” Furthermore, he explained, “And then we also have interconnection products where we enable enterprises to connect to multiple clouds simultaneously with ease and also have a hybrid multi-cloud setup.”
He suggested that companies keep their steady-state workloads on their own hardware because it’s cost-effective, but they use Equinix’s interconnection products to use the cloud services during high-demand campaigns or for disaster recovery.
The path to self-reliance of AI
Given how big a service provider Equinix is, I also wanted to understand from Mr Manoj whether or not he thinks India is becoming self-reliant in AI or not. Not only that, but also his thoughts on the current landscape and the challenges we face.
He answered by saying, “I think self-reliant should not be the only focus area today. We should ensure that AI and its benefits should be omnipresent. I mean, it should be available to anybody and everybody. That should be the focus area.”
“Our focus should be that a student in Jharkhand should have access to, say, a dedicated tutor so that he can talk and discuss and get explanations and then study and then grow. Or a medical practitioner in Odisha should be able to ask questions that, I have a patient and what should I do? And he gets advice online through an AI agent.”
What are the challenges of democratisation of AI in India?
In a similar line, I also wanted to understand from Mr Manoj on how AI can be democratised in India. He explained this and said, “The power is expensive, data center space and all that is expensive. So that’s one constraint and that’s a big challenge because if you want to allow AI to be able to serve 1.4 billion or at least 60-70% of the population, you need a lot of resources to get it to that.”
“We have to find out ways of using some normal GPUs or normal CPUs to build up some services so that we can offer these services to the public at large.”
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Madhav Banka
Madhav works as a Consultant at Digit, covering branded content and feature stories. He has been a part of the Consumer Tech Industry for over 4 years, covering news, features & reviews. While not busy working, you'll usually find him playing video games, or watching films. View Full Profile
