What does it actually take to build AI for 70 crore users?

Rahul Chari is the co-founder and CTO of PhonePe, over 700 million users, profitable, and heading toward IPO. Outside the DPI and NPCI teams, he's been one of the biggest contributors to India's payments stack, and one of the few people regulators and founders actually call when the technology shifts.

This conversation with Vikram Vaidyanathan is about a single claim: India's edge in AI isn't something it has to go build. It's already built, in the data, in the rails, in the way the country chose to digitise.

The opportunity now is to use it to build the bank branch of one truly personalized financial product for every Indian.

If you're a founder, engineer, or product leader trying to understand where India's AI story is really headed, don't miss this.

What you'll learn:

1. Why PhonePe avoided output metrics in year one of AI and why it worked
2. How to build an AI culture without a top-down mandate
3. What an LLM gateway is and why every scaled company needs one
4. Why on-device models are the right bet for consumer AI in India
5. How DPDP will reshape how companies think about AI and data
6. Why India's role in global AI is in applied AI, not foundational models
7. How DPI × AI creates the opportunity for hyper-personalized financial products

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