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Experts and innovators from across the Global South highlighted how artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming sectors such as agriculture, public services, healthcare and education, while calling for deeper collaboration to scale these benefits sustainably.
Speaking to ANI on the sidelines of the Carnegie Global Technology Summit Innovation Dialogue 2025 in the national capital, Davide Menguzzato, Head of Impact & Business Development at DeepLeaf, emphasised how AI is already reshaping agricultural support for small farmers. "Imagine in the field with the simple use of a phone, the farmers can understand what happened to their crops and receive in a matter of seconds specific treatment recommendations, organic treatment, or active ingredient recommendation." "With the AI, we can democratise this by just putting an agronomist on every phone in a simple and efficient way... Leveraging AI for helping farmers is something important, but AI is going to be useful as well in healthcare, in education, and in all sectors." he said. Bhutan-based entrepreneur Ugyen Dendup, co-founder and CEO of NoMindBhutan said that AI solutions have significantly improved customer support efficiency. Talking about his startup, Dendup said, "We have been in this industry since 2022... We started as an AI startup, but we can see some differences in our clients' service. By partnering with us, our client has dropped around 17% of call numbers and reduced 78 per cent of live chat messages." Applications in healthcare were also in focus. Prathyusha Potharaju, Co-founder of Grailmaker Innovations, discussed how AI-driven customisation is aiding children with neurological conditions. "When it's a brain-based disorder, usually the tough part is customising the things. All our activities are highly customised... a lot of things are based on gesture interactions and object recognition, which becomes easier and very interactive with the child..." she said, adding, "When we are here and understand that we have a voice to say that this is what we are struggling with, it feels very warming... They are trying to represent, take our use cases and see how it even makes sense in the larger perspective," Potharaju added. Srinath Srinivasa, Dean of R&D at IIIT Bangalore, pointed to AI's sweeping impact across sectors. "AI is disrupting just about every field as we speak... We work with the government... to see how we can use AI in designing evidence-based policy interventions. We use AI for work in digital inclusion... The impact of AI is across the board, and it's going to change; it's going to create major disruption..." he said. Rashmi Abbigeri, Research Engineer at Metagov, said, "A lot of people are using general AI, the free version of that AI; it has a lot of guardrails already built in... It's been a well-organised event... I feel that what I took away from these breakthrough discussions was that if we can come together and define the objectives for education, healthcare, or agriculture, then we can see how we can use AI to help achieve that objective..." Experts painted a picture of an AI ecosystem rapidly advancing across developing economies--driven by innovation, collaboration and a growing emphasis on inclusive, accessible design. (ANI)
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