India must play a leadership role not just in what artificial intelligence (AI) models mean and how we think about data, privacy, security and trust, insists Shantanu Narayen, Chair and CEO, Adobe, at the India AI Impact Summit. In a fireside conversation with Sunil Bharti Mittal, Founder and Chairman of Bharti Enterprises, Narayen noted with a sense of responsibility that companies such as Adobe help produce the “world’s content”, and therefore must take a lead in content authenticity initiatives.
Alongside, Adobe has announced that as a compliment to the Indian Government’s Create in India vision and measures proposed in the Union Budget 2026 focusing on the creation of two million jobs in the fields of Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics by the year 2030, the company is making an AI first offer with an industry endorsed curriculum, free for the 15,000 schools and 500 colleges that will have Content Creator Labs. This will include free access to its popular apps, Photoshop, Acrobat and Firefly AI for students in the country.
“Adobe is expanding the opportunity for creativity for millions of students across India, empowering them with AI skills, further accelerating Prime Minister Modi’s vision,” says Narayen. The company insists they will remain a key partner in advancing the Government of India’s AI-led initiatives across creativity, human capital, and trust and safety in AI.
This initiative, adobe insists, will provide students with tools focused on creativity, productivity and AI-powered skills, which are expected to be useful in key growth sectors such as graphic design, video and visual effects, animation, gaming, marketing, media, and e-commerce.
To the question about whether leading AI companies work in a way that things remain controlled in terms of commercial usage and therefore revenues as well as market share, Narayen says the competition between commercial enterprises who want to keep information proprietary and those who don’t, is an “inevitable challenge”.
“One of the things we’ve always done is, everything that we do is open standards. The reason why PDF has been adopted so massively is because it was an open standard,” he points out, before adding, “But I think it’ll require companies and enterprises to behave differently and really recognise what is their sustainable advantage which cannot over time, be just the model. It has to be the use cases of what people are doing with that model.”
Narayan insists India is better positioned than most countries in that regard. Frugal innovation is one of those things. “That’s our secret sauce, jugaad. I think it’s because we use jugaad. That’s the secret sauce and that’s how we’ve been able to succeed on the global stage,” he says.
Adobe says free access to Firefly, Photoshop and Acrobat will be available to students of accredited higher education institutions across India, though specifics are awaited.
