Running a big international event is not supposed to be super difficult. And if things go wrong, it can make the whole country look bad. Wednesday was supposed to be a big moment for Sarvam AI, an Indian company that made a powerful language model. But instead of talking about Sarvam, everyone started talking about a private university that brought a Chinese robot dog to its stall.

What the Galgotias University team did wasn’t shocking. In India, even in school, kids often win prizes for projects that their parents or hired artists make for them. Real, rough, honest effort usually gets ignored. So the Galgotias team simply followed that old habit by showing off something they didn’t make. But the real mistake was made by the event organisers, who should have checked every entry properly.

This AI summit is not a normal fair. It attracted top technology leaders, global media, and is supposed to end with an important declaration. Countries like the UK, South Korea, and France had already hosted similar summits in earlier years, setting a high standard.

India agreed to host this summit a whole year ago, so there was plenty of time to prepare. But things didn’t go smoothly.

On Day 1, people had trouble entering the venue. The registration system didn’t work well. Online payments failed, forcing people to use cash.

This was a big missed chance to show the world that India can run high-tech events. It was also a chance to show off UPI, but bad internet made that impossible. Some exhibitors even complained that their items were stolen. And then, on Day 2, the robot dog scandal made things look worse.

The IT minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, apologised for the mess on the first day. But looking back, did the summit really need to feel like a carnival? India has decades of experience running big events. Many shows, like the Auto Expo, have separate days for business visitors and the general public. This summit should have followed that model too. That way, the positive things wouldn’t have been buried under bad news.

And there was good news.

Sarvam AI is a great example. It can read and translate Indian languages better than many famous global AI tools like ChatGPT. You could use it to read menus, street signs, or old texts in other Indian languages. State governments could use it to digitise land records faster.

Sarvam shows that even though Western AI models are huge and powerful, there is still space for specialised Indian models. AI isn’t one big race — it’s many different races happening at the same time.

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