Coromandel AI Conclave 2026
The Coromandel AI Conclave 2026 is an Official Pre-Summit event of the IndiaAI Impact Summit 2026, hosted by Peritum Partners. It convenes key stakeholders and contributors who are actively shaping how India engages with artificial intelligence – across industry, government, academia, civil society, and the broader innovation ecosystem.
Held in Chennai, the Conclave is envisioned as a space for articulating a distinctly South Indian and Global South perspective on how artificial intelligence is reshaping business, society, and everyday life.
The Vision
The Conclave aims to bring together people to engage with artificial intelligence – across industry, government, academia, civil society, and the broader innovation ecosystem.
Rooted in Chennai’s deep-tech corridor and the IIT Madras Research Park ecosystem, the Conclave is designed as a space where two voices that are often under-heard in global AI debates can speak on their own terms: South India and the wider Global South.
The focus is on how AI actually lands in our worlds – in corporate and business operations, in state-led digital governance, in regulatory and legal systems, and in communities that live with infrastructure gaps, data asymmetries, and very different risk profiles from the Global North.
Across its plenary and a closed-door roundtable, the Coromandel AI Conclave will look at AI’s commercial impact, its implications for rights and personhood, and the regulatory guardrails needed for a fair and innovation-friendly ecosystem.
The outcome is meant to travel well beyond the room – contributing to the IndiaAI Impact Summit and helping ensure that the next phase of AI policy and practice reflects the lived realities of South India and the Global South, not just the usual centres of AI power.
Themes
Theme I - From Hype to Strategy: Charting the Path of India Inc. in the New AI Economy
This topic will consider how Indian enterprises and high-growth startups can move beyond pilots and buzzwords to build grounded and scalable AI strategies. The conversation will draw on real implementation stories, sector-specific use cases, and the organisational shifts required to weave AI into core business processes rather than treating it as a peripheral experiment. Speakers in Plenary I will examine business-model innovation in an AI-first world, the growing role of AI in venture capital and M&A due diligence, and how leadership teams can approach substitution, augmentation, and reskilling within the workforce. The session will also address information security and data governance, AI-driven financial forecasting and decision-making, and what effective go-to-market execution looks like in an AI-enabled marketplace.
Theme II: Individual-Centric: “Human-in-the-Loop: Protecting Identity, Ensuring Safety, and Guaranteeing Rights in an Automated World”
Theme II will centre the individual in an increasingly automated and AI-mediated world. Under the theme Human-in-the-Loop: Protecting Identity, Ensuring Safety, and Guaranteeing Rights in an Automated World, the session will examine the new categories of risk that arise as powerful AI tools become widely available, and how law, technology, and institutions can respond to these imminent risks and harms. The discussion will cover deepfakes and synthetic media, misuse of personality, image, and voice, data privacy concerns, and the rise of audio theft and impersonation. Panellists will also analyse the evolving landscape of content moderation and platform responsibility, questions of bias and discrimination in AI systems, and what a meaningful 'human-in-the-loop' standard should look like in practice – for consumers, workers, and citizens.
Theme III: Building the Guardrails: Architecting India’s AI-Ready Legal and Governance Framework
Theme III will look ahead to the legal, regulatory, and governance architecture that will shape India’s AI journey over the coming decade. Under the theme Building the Guardrails: Architecting India’s AI-Ready Legal and Governance Framework, the session will explore how emerging approaches to AI governance interact with existing laws and regulatory frameworks on data, information technology, competition, consumer protection, and sector-specific regulation. Speakers in theme III will discuss how liability and accountability may be allocated in complex AI systems, the challenges posed by cross-border data flows and globally distributed AI supply chains, and the role of standards, self-regulation, and regulatory sandboxes. The discourse will further focus on how policymakers, businesses, and legal practitioners can collaborate to design guardrails that support innovation and investment, while protecting rights, building trust, and strengthening long-term resilience in the AI ecosystem.
Date and Location
Main Conclave: Saturday 10 Jan 2026
Virtual Closed Door Discussion: Sunday 11 Jan 2026
Location: IITM Research Park, Tharamani, Chennai