Lattice 2026, the annual business conclave of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM Calcutta), was held in Kolkata today under the theme ‘The Capability Decade’. The conclave brought together students, industry leaders and professionals for discussions on artificial intelligence, technology, innovation, leadership and the capabilities required to create impact in a rapidly evolving technology landscape.
The conclave featured Shri Amitabh Nag, Chief Executive Officer, Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD), Digital India Corporation, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), as Chief Guest. He shared insights from India’s experience of building and deploying language technology as Digital Public Infrastructure, with a focus on the challenges of taking AI from models and experimentation to real-world adoption at scale.
Speaking on the challenges of reaching a diverse population, Shri Nag described the digital, language and literacy divides as interconnected challenges and stressed that technology must adapt to people and their contexts. He highlighted the importance of voice-first and multilingual technologies in expanding access, while noting that India’s diversity requires AI systems to account for differences in language, dialect, domain and context.
The practical application of this approach was also demonstrated during the session, with BHASHINI’s Shrutlekh deployed live as Shri Nag spoke, enabling real-time language translation and transcription. The demonstration showcased how language AI can operate in a live setting and support multilingual communication beyond controlled or experimental environments.
The interaction also touched upon the organisational and product choices that shape the success of emerging technologies. Drawing from BHASHINI’s experience, Shri Nag spoke about building with people and for people, including community participation in creating language resources through BhashaDaan. He also underlined the importance of clear use cases, rapid experimentation, learning from failure and short feedback loops in moving from ideas to deployable solutions, while bringing research and product teams closer to real-world requirements.
Reflecting on the experience of building BHASHINI, he said, “The hardest problems we faced were almost never about the model. They were about market design, incentive design, organisational design, and ecosystem design. He further said “Diversity is new normal “ and we need to adapt fast and quick
The discussion further highlighted the role of partnerships, open infrastructure, co-creation and teamwork in taking technology beyond individual products. He noted that organisations working with emerging technologies need to build a culture of conversation, experimentation, brainstorming and partnership, while creating infrastructure that enables multiple participants to contribute to a larger ecosystem.
The conclave also featured discussions on emerging technologies, business and leadership, with participants engaging on the changing requirements of organisations and professionals in an AI-driven economy. The emphasis on capability building reflected the need to move beyond technological development alone towards building the organisational and ecosystem capacity required for meaningful adoption.
Concluding his interaction with students, Shri Nag encouraged them to look beyond individual applications and consider the larger platforms, standards and ecosystems they can help create. “Ask instead, what ecosystem standard can we establish, and how quickly can we get others to help us build the network effects around it?” he said.
The Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD), under the Digital India Corporation (DIC), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), is India's national platform for AI-powered multilingual digital inclusion. BHASHINI powers over 800 government websites, has enabled more than 9 billion cumulative AI inferences, processes over 24 million AI inferences daily, and supports 36 Indian text languages, 23 Indian voice languages and 35 international languages, making Digital Public Infrastructure more accessible through Language AI.