Nitin Paranjpe, Chairman, Hindustan Unilever Ltd delivering the 44th Palkhivala Memorial Lecture on ‘ Artificial Intelligence for Aam Aadmi’, in Chennai.
| Photo Credit:
Bijoy Ghosh
AI comes with its own set of risks, and the anxiety around AI is legitimate, but this should not lead India to miss the power it has to transform lives, Nitin Paranjpe, Chairman, Hindustan Unilever Ltd , said here on Saturday. He called on India to build strong institutions that ensure that benefits of the technology are “widely shared not narrowly captured.”
The HUL veteran, who started his journey as a management trainee in the 80s and rose to become the chairman, was delivering the 44th Palkhivala Memorial Lecture on ‘ Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Aam Aadmi’, in Chennai.
Talking about the rapid advancements in AI and the impact it was having on society, Paranjpe urged the audience to introspect if the technology AI was contributing to enhancing human equity or quietly shrinking it. “The anxiety surrounding AI is real. And it is legitimate .It must be acknowledged, not dismissed,” he said.
Key risks
He listed out a few key risks he perceives with proliferation of AI including the risk of digital colonisation, risk of deception and distortion at scale, the illusion of choice it creates with algorithms driving a narrow world view, and finally the biggest risk concerning job losses.
However, seeing the risks alone will lead to India missing the silent revolution underway, he noted. “AI’s true significance lies in the possibility that it may fundamentally change what it means to participate in society,” he said.
Citing instances of how AI is fundamentally altering the spheres of education, health and other such critical areas, he said that it offers hope for change. “It begins to break the assumption that the inability to read and write denies you ‘access’ and excludes you from participating in economic activity and progress,” he said.
“If AI is to truly work for India, we must consciously treat it not merely as a private commodity, but as a form of public infrastructure. That means prioritising applications that serve public purpose,” he said.
Institutions in India must remain “obsessively focused on promoting AI in voice form over text to ensure wider use, grow AI use in Indian languages over English, and on large-scale capability and skill-building. “Because, it is not AI that will threaten livelihoods, but it is exclusion from AI that will,” he said.
Taking questions from the audience, Paranjpe said that like all organisations, HUL too has been focused on undertaking AI initiatives to improve productivity across R&D, marketing, finance, supply chain and other functions. In the corporate world, the real challenge now is the enterprise-wide AI use, he added.
Over the years, the Palkhiwala Memorial Lecture series, organised by the Palkhivala Foundation has been delivered by distinguished voices including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Former RBI governor Shaktikanta Das, and many others.
Published on February 14, 2026
