11 countries just agreed on paper that AI belongs in healthcare, and Indian founders have been proving it in villages with no electricity
The BRICS declaration called for stronger disease surveillance, laboratory networks, digital health and local production of medical products, while specifically highlighting AI as a technology to leverage.
That caught my attention because Indian startups are already building exactly this.
Qure.ai reads chest X-rays with AI to detect TB and lung cancer, now reaching 45M+ people across 105+ countries.
Molbio Diagnosticss built a battery-powered device that runs a full TB test in a village with no lab or electricity, now the WHO's global standard.
Wadhwani AI built a tool that screens for TB just from a cough recorded on a phone.
The next layer goes beyond diagnosis: using AI to spot patterns before an outbreak becomes a crisis, connect information across laboratories & help health systems decide where to act first.
That's exactly why BRICS has now created a dedicated sub-working group for an Integrated Early Warning System for infectious diseases.
What excites me is the change in the question.
A few years ago, founders were asking, "What can I build with AI?" Today, increasingly, they're asking, "What part of healthcare can AI make 10x better?"
And healthcare is just one example.
The same shift is happening in manufacturing, finance, energy, agriculture and education, with AI moving from being the product itself to becoming the layer underneath every product.
India has a massive advantage here.
- Millions of businesses
- One of the world's largest digital public infrastructures
- Huge amounts of real-world data & a generation of founders who are already building for scale.
The bigger opportunity isn't just the next AI unicorn. It's making every Indian hospital, factory, bank, farm and business more capable with AI, and that could end up far bigger than the AI industry itself.
AI could become the technology sitting underneath every industry in India, not just one industry of its own.