Continuing the 25 years of excellence celebration at Dhirubhai Ambani University (DAU), the IEEE Student Branch at DAU in collaboration with INDGenius Gujarat, organised the INDGenius AI Summit 2025 on September 14, 2025. As the first student-led artificial intelligence summit, the event's core mission was to explore AI's profound impact across various industries. It aimed to raise awareness of contemporary AI developments, foster a dynamic dialogue between students and industry practitioners, and showcase career pathways to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration.

The Chief Guests for the summit were Mr. Ankush Sabharwal, Founder of BharatGPT & CoRover.ai, and Shri Ajay Tomar (IPS, Retd.) Former Commissioner of Police, Surat. The eminent panel of speakers included Mr. Vivek Anand from TechD Cybersecurity Ltd., Mr. Rohit Kashyap from Maytree School of Entrepreneurship, and Mr. Dhruvil Hapani from QX Global Group. Also present were Prof. Tathagata Bandyopadhyay (Director General, DAU), Dr. G. Venkatesh (Director, School of Technology, DAU), Mr. Siddharth Swaminarayan (Executive Registrar, DAU), and Mr. Souvik Sarkar (Head of Career Planning and Marketing, DAU).

Addressing the audience, in his opening remark, Prof. Tathagata Bandyopadhyay, shared that AI has both apprehensions and hope. He saw AI as a revolutionary technology that could be a force for social good, and to prevent its abuse, he advocated for state-level guidelines, citing the example of an app created by Tejasvi Manoj to help elders avoid scams as a positive use case.

In his talk, Mr Ankush Sabharwal shared that the purest form of donation was knowledge, which grew when shared. He advocated for a problem-solving approach, suggesting one should identify a problem and then work on a solution, rather than starting with an idea. He highlighted that good things take time and that a single solution did not fit all problems, citing the high failure rates of AI and Gen AI projects. He also emphasised the need for technology to be more natural and user-friendly, removing barriers like the need to read and write to increase adoption and reach. He saw Indians as an adaptive and risk-taking community, capable of driving change.

Shri Ajay Tomar highlighted that disruptors are the true creators of innovation. He cited historical examples such as the steam engine, electricity, and the internet to make his case. He also pointed out the incredible speed of modern disruption, noting that ChatGPT reached 100 million users in just two months. Looking ahead, he believes that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which will be able to think like humans, is set to completely transform our world, though he acknowledges this will come with both pros and cons.

In his closing remarks, Dr. G. Venkatesh, noted that while ChatGPT's usage growth has flattened, it has successfully challenged Google's dominance in search. The users of ChatGPT are primarily under the age of 25, and India accounts for the second-highest traffic at 8.76%, with most users searching for programming-related information. Citing a research paper, he stated that while GenAI could substitute 25% of the IT industry's work, its impact on R&D is far less at under 11%. This substitution is most likely to affect routine tasks such as programming and testing. Dr Venkatesh also highlighted the substantial environmental cost of developing and maintaining this technology.

As part of the summit, the IntelliHack 2025 hackathon was organised on the theme AI in cybersecurity. The event was sponsored by TechD Cybersecurity Limited (formerly Techdefence Labs). Out of all the registrations received, ten teams were shortlisted for the final round, where they had the opportunity to present their solutions to Mr Vivek Anand, Vice President of TechD Cybersecurity Ltd, and two other employees from the company. The winners were awarded with prizes.

The event witnessed participation over 700 students from reputed institutes of Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar. The AI Summit created an environment for learning, dialogue and connections around AI. The event marks a step towards nurturing a culture of innovation and learning in emerging technologies at DAU.