Digital
Eight-year-old coder steals the show at India AI Impact Summit 2026
Ranvir Sachdeva meets Sundar Pichai and Sam Altman, links ancient philosophy to modern AI
DELHI: Amid a sea of global tech chiefs and policy heavyweights, the loudest buzz at Bharat Mandapam this week came from a boy barely tall enough to see over the lectern.
Ranvir Sachdeva, eight, became the youngest keynote speaker at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, elbowing his way into a line-up dominated by chief executives, founders and ministers. Calm, bespectacled and fiercely articulate, he declared himself a technologist — and spoke like one.
“I’m here as the youngest keynote speaker at the India AI Impact Summit. I’m talking about how I’m linking ancient Indian philosophies to modern-day technologies. I’m also covering the different approaches which the rest of the nations are building AI,” he told news agency ANI.
He added: “I’m talking about how India is building AI with. I’m sharing my own use case of an Indian AI model just released and how I’m contributing to India’s GDP and driving AI literacy with it.”
The summit, held from February 16 to 21 in New Delhi, has drawn global names. Ranvir met Google chief executive Sundar Pichai and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman on the sidelines, sharing photographs of the encounters. He has previously met Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff and Doreen Bogdan-Martin, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, at the AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva.
In 2024, he met António Guterres, United Nations secretary-general.
His most high-profile brush with corporate royalty came earlier. In 2023, during the opening of Apple’s Delhi store, Ranvir demonstrated his Swift coding skills to Apple chief executive Tim Cook in a one-on-one session. Cook later posted: “What an incredible reception, Delhi, thank you! We’re delighted to welcome our customers to our newest store—Apple Saket!”
What an incredible reception, Delhi, thank you! We’re delighted to welcome our customers to our newest store—Apple Saket! pic.twitter.com/5Jmi79ixzl— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) April 20, 2023
Ranvir replied publicly: “Thank you so much, @tim_cook! It was great meeting you today and showcasing my Apple Swift coding skills! You are an inspiration and I so want to meet you at #WWDC2023!”
Thank you so much, Tim! You are an inspiration and I so want to meet you at #WWDC2023 ! 🙂 https://t.co/BVthznLjD8— Ranvir Singh Sachdeva (@ranvirsachdeva) April 20, 2023
The invitation followed. Cook extended a personal call for Ranvir to attend the Worldwide Developers Conference 2023 at Apple Park in Cupertino.
This is not Ranvir’s first turn on the global stage. In 2025, aged seven, he addressed the United Nations’ AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva as its youngest keynote speaker. He spoke for 20 minutes on “Agents of Change: A 7-Year-Old’s Lens on Generation AI for Good”, in front of more than 10,000 attendees from over 180 countries and 53 UN partner organisations.
He shared the broader stage with Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel laureate and Turing Award winner, alongside senior figures from Amazon, Meta and Salesforce. According to a LinkedIn post by the Ardee School, Ranvir argued that “Generation AI are the true changemakers”, highlighting healthcare breakthroughs from bionic solutions and exoskeletons to assistive devices for ALS patients. He called for the democratisation of such tools to bridge the digital divide.
The precocity runs deep. At six, he became the world’s youngest TEDx speaker, speaking on technology and innovation. At five, he won a gold medal as a “Super Presenter” in the 2022 Global Reading Challenge. Media reports say that in 2021 he built a prototype rocket aimed at supporting NASA’s Mars exploration, earning recognition from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
In 2023, he became the youngest recipient of a robotics and AI certification from IIT Delhi after a summer workshop at the I-HUB Foundation for Robotics.
He began coding at three.
At an event otherwise obsessed with trillion-dollar valuations, sovereign AI stacks and regulatory guardrails, it was a small voice that cut through. Linking Sanskrit thought to silicon chips, GDP to generative models, Ranvir Sachdeva did more than make history. He made the grown-ups listen.
#WATCH | Delhi: At #IndiaAIImpactSummit2026, Ranvir Sachdeva, Child Prodigy, Technologist, Global Author says, "I'm here as the youngest keynote speaker at the India AI Impact Summit. I'm talking about how I'm linking ancient Indian philosophies to modern-day technologies. I'm… pic.twitter.com/e3OGgtxyDK— ANI (@ANI) February 19, 2026
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
