Most AI conversations are US-centric, software-industry-centric, or stuck in high-level marketing claims. This one isn’t. MCCIA is doing the unglamorous, on-the-ground work of getting AI into the hands of the people who form the backbone of India’s economy — micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), farmers, and small-town entrepreneurs.
Prashant Girbane, an IIM alum with a career spanning the UN and TCS, leads MCCIA — a 91-year-old regional chamber with 3,000+ member companies across all 36 districts of Maharashtra, mostly small and medium, mostly from the manufacturing sector. In this episode he lays out his core thesis: while the world races to build the largest models, India’s real opportunity is diffusion — the “cherry on the cake” he adds on top of Jensen Huang’s five-layer AI stack. Access creates opportunity, opportunity creates choice, and choice is freedom.
He walks through MCCIA’s three-stage Applied AI program, shares vivid case studies (an attar maker in Ratnagiri, a dairy farmer optimizing cattle feed, a language trainer who saved ₹2.5 lakh), and explains why an AI session held in a temple, led by a 23-year-old, might be the most telling image of how AI actually reaches India.
Highlights
The five-layer AI “cake” — Jensen Huang’s framing (energy → semiconductor chip → cloud → large language models → applications) and how Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw maps India’s approach onto it.
The sixth layer: diffusion — Prashant’s central argument for why access and adoption matter more for India than competing at the frontier. “We don’t want to run the race of building the largest model — we want to run the race of fastest diffusion.”
Stage 1 — Going to the people: colleagues physically visited 13 districts, talked to 1,000 micro and small companies in groups of 20–50, including one session held in a temple in Ratnagiri.
Stage 2 — One-on-one consultations: a target of 1,000 personalized sessions (430 completed), via a free helpline, identifying common patterns in how MSMEs want to use ChatGPT, Google AI Studio, Gemini, and Copilot.
Stage 3 — Co-developing “applets”: building no-code tools each useful to 100,000+ companies (attendance management, visitor management, invoice/brochure scanning), co-created with users and shared freely, hosted on the user’s own cloud.
Real case studies: the attar (scent) maker testing combinations virtually; the dairy farmer optimizing feed for milk yield; the language-training institute that avoided a ₹2.5 lakh marketing quote.
Who pays for it: legacy and goodwill — member fees, supportive board members, and purpose-driven young engineers (and non-engineers) on the team.
AI beyond MSMEs: the three big-impact areas — agriculture (crop disease diagnosis from images), healthcare (telemedicine, ABHA), and education (personalized, contextualized access).
The UPI analogy and the trusted intermediary — if commerce diffusion rode on the local shopkeeper, education diffusion rides on the school teacher.
The school as a Schelling point — using schools for low-cost AI experimentation and “pre-solving” the workforce problem five years out.
Government’s role in scale — market failure, the cluster-based model (Auto Cluster, food processing, electronics), and why governments should fund small experiments and scale what works.
Coping with the pace of change — tokens getting cheaper and models getting better; why “learning to learn” and WhatsApp-group “tribes” matter more than waiting for the next model.
Advice for young people — don’t fear the technology, you don’t need to code, learn faster, and the difference between “jobs” and “work.”
What’s next: a digital MCCIA — the AI Studio and helpline now help ~4,200 companies a year digitally (5× the ~700–800 helped in person), embodying Mashelkar and Borde’s “More from Less for More.”
Notable quotes
“Access is opportunities, opportunities are choices, choices are freedom — and there’s nothing more important than freedom.”
“We do not want to run the race of building the largest model. We want to run the race of fastest diffusion.”
“AI takes away tasks, not jobs — and those who use AI will be ahead of those who don’t.”
“In the future you may not have a lot of jobs, but you’ll have a lot of work.” (paraphrasing Dr. Anand Deshpande)
“Everybody doesn’t have to boil the entire ocean. Boil your cup of water, get your tea, feel refreshed — that’s good.”
“Every time we have listened, it has worked. And it has taken less effort.”
Links & resources
MCCIA (Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries & Agriculture)
MCCIA MSME Helpline — free expert consultations
MCCIA MSME Helpline — 100 Case Studies: Real Stories of Guidance and Transformation
Dr. R.A. Mashelkar & Sushil Borde — “More from Less for More” (affordable, inclusive innovation)
Pune International Centre — the think tank Prashant is associated with
Connect with MCCIA
🌐 Website: mcciapune.com
💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/mcciapune
📸 Instagram: @mccia.pune
👤 Prashant Girbane on LinkedIn: prashant-girbane
