New Delhi, April 28 -- It's no secret that there's a worldwide tug of war for artificial intelligence (AI) supremacy among leading economies. America has the upper hand by default, China is a disruptor par excellence, France has jumped in and India wants a seat at the top table, too.

Amid all of this, there's one aspect that keeps coming up every now and then-foundational models. In February, Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Union information technology minister, said that India will build and showcase its own foundational AI models by the end of this year. Many took this as a knee-jerk reaction to the hype around Chinese upstart DeepSeek's release of open-for-all AI models. But, all of this begs a question: Does India really need to focus its inve...