Nandan Nilekani, speaking at the Global Fintech Fest 2026, said the rise of artificial intelligence could pose a greater jobs risk for large companies, where structured tasks and roles make it easier to automate work.

“In the world of AI, one of the big concerns is what happens to jobs, and it's a legitimate concern because large companies can actually apply AI effectively to reduce jobs because they are very structured in their activities,” Nilekani said.

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He said an economy that wants to generate jobs cannot rely only on a few large companies and instead needs millions of small businesses.

“Therefore, if you want to create an economy that's lively and is generating jobs, it's not necessarily done by big companies,” the Infosys co-founder said.

“It's going to come from millions of small companies which may have one employee or 10 employees. Those jobs are not AI. You can't use AI for them, and therefore those jobs in millions of small companies, are actually safer than a few million jobs in large companies. So if you want to AI-proof an economy, you should create a situation where job creation is done by millions of small companies,” he said.

Nilekani said this would require more entrepreneurs and pointed to the growth of India’s formal startup sector.

“And if you want to do that, of course you need entrepreneurs. In India, we have seen that in the formal startup sector, we had 10,000 startups in 2015,” he said.

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He said the number of startups had grown to 150,000 in 2025 and could reach a million by 2035, with startups having access to different sources of capital.

Nilekani also pointed to the informal sector and said both new startups and traditional businesses would be employers of the future.

“So both the new startup world as well as the traditional world, they will be the employers of the future, and for them we have to make life easier. Which is why, if we use all this technology, we'll empower them. And therefore, we have to think of an economy with billions of small businesses and make them AI proof,” he said.