Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday met several IT industry leaders and invited them to explore opportunities for technical collaboration and investment.

During a bilateral meeting with Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian and his team here, Sitharaman encouraged them to explore local linkages in India for territorial collaboration and to develop tech for India and the world market under the ‘Make In India’ initiative.

They discussed the transformative evolution of India’s digital infrastructure under the Digital India initiative in recent years, positioning the country as a global leader in digital adoption.

Kurian emphasised the need to connect India to the global network through land and sea cable infrastructure.

During another meeting with Turing CEO Jonathan Siddharth, the Finance Minister highlighted India’s policy framework for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and encouraged his company to explore opportunities for collaboration and fruitful engagement.

Siddharth expressed his desire to see India at the forefront of the AI revolution and spoke about working in the domain of AI with India and through Indian contributors to create a sovereign model that can serve as a template for the world, the finance ministry said in a series of posts on X.