New Delhi, Feb 19 (IANS) The ‘India-AI Impact Summit 2026’, which commenced on February 16 with a powerful vision, places India’s youth at the heart of the nation’s artificial intelligence (AI) journey, according to an official statement issued on Thursday.
India has the largest youth population in the world, with over 65 per cent of its population under the age of 35, positioning this demographic powerhouse as an engine of economic momentum.
The summit reflects a shift from passive learning to active participation, redefining employment across sectors, spotlighting new skills, and the urgent need to sync education with industry needs. The focus is on boosting employability, enhancing productivity, and forging seamless bridges from classrooms to AI-driven careers, the statement explained.
Young innovators are driving the agenda at the summit through hands-on platforms such as innovation challenges, startup pitches, and live solution demonstrations. These structured engagements connect skills with market needs and channel India’s youth potential into productive capacity, it observed.
The Summit serves as a catalyst to accelerate job creation in emerging sectors, including Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics, which are projected to generate nearly 2 million jobs by 2030. By blending global insights with youth skilling and job creation, India is cementing the demographic dividend as the cornerstone of its AI strategy and a future-ready workforce.
AI is rapidly emerging as a transformative opportunity for India’s vast talent pool. By reshaping the employment landscape, AI is generating new roles, enhancing productivity, and expanding pathways for inclusive growth. India sees AI as a key lever to expand youth jobs and skills, blending emerging technology with inclusive growth and talent development.
Rising demand for AI skills and jobs is reshaping opportunities for young Indians. Between January 2023 and March 2025, AI-related job postings in South Asia increased from 2.9 per cent to 6.5 per cent of all vacancies, with demand for AI skills growing 75 per cent faster than for non-AI roles.
This shift signals a structural transformation in India’s labour market — one that increasingly rewards digital fluency, advanced technical capability, and interdisciplinary expertise. For India’s youth, AI is a pathway toward skill-intensive, future-ready employment across technology and adjacent sectors, the statement observes.
Recognising AI as a strategic employment driver, the Union Budget 2026–27 reinforced the government’s focus on AI skilling and talent development. The budget prioritised the Orange Economy, which overlaps with AI-driven fields like Animation, Gaming, Digital content, and Immersive media.
It allocated support for the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT), Mumbai to establish AI-aligned Content Creator Labs in 15,000 schools and 500 colleges, opening pathways for youth to gain future-ready skills and enter AI-centric job roles. This initiative is projected to generate around 20 lakh new jobs, directly boosting employment prospects for students, creators, and young professionals across India.
The Budget also highlighted AI and emerging technologies as central to shaping jobs and skills across sectors. It proposed an Education to Employment and Enterprise Standing Committee to assess how AI and related tech affect jobs and skill requirements, aiming to bridge education, work and enterprise -demand.
Affordable AI infrastructure and policy support under the IndiaAI Mission are also democratising access to compute, data, and innovation opportunities beyond metropolitan cities.
–IANS
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