Budget 2026–27 | Industry Reactions from Enterprise software Deep Tech, Agri, AI, Fintech & VC Leaders

Rajarshi Bhattacharyya, Country Leader, SUSE India

SUSE India reaction to the Union Budget, reinforcing technology as a key enabler across AI, manufacturing, and digital infrastructure, with a focus on long-term foundations.

“The Union Budget 2026-27 is a clear demonstration that the Digital Economy is a cornerstone of India’s path to continual development, exemplified by the growing focus on IT infrastructure in AI, Semiconductors, Data Centres, and Cloud Services. Open source technologies, already popular amongst both grassroots and enterprise Developers in India, can be a powerful enabler for impactful innovation to happen.

This year’s Budget calls for scaling strategic and frontier sectors, for example the India Semiconductor Mission 2.0 and Biopharma SHAKTI. This will require increased capacity in high-availability and real-time processing. Smart deployment of open source in Edge environments, or cases where devices are in geographically disparate sources but still require high connectivity, could help facilitate the nation’s ongoing transition from traditional manufacturing into intelligent data-driven hubs.

As the Budget prioritizes long-term economic security and AI-driven governance, AI that is built on genuine open source principles offers a stronger and more transparent framework for usage in key growth sectors like AgriStack and fisheries. This balanced approach ensures AI applications are secure, scalable, and built to meet the dynamic needs of India's diverse population.

The budget also highlights the development of city economic regions and high-speed rail corridors, which will be vital to India’s representation and competitiveness on the world stage. Physical infrastructure today is inseparable from a digital one, and should be considered in tandem. Open source provides knowledge pooling and accelerated development cycles, to support interoperable and resilient digital infrastructure. While ensuring there is maximal return-on-investment from public CapEx for public good.”

Niqo Robotics (Agritech / Spot Spraying)

Jaisimha Rao, Founder & CEO

“With the launch of Bharat-VISTAAR, which integrates AgriStack with AI-enabled advisory systems, the Budget takes a clear step towards building a trusted digital data backbone for Indian agriculture. By focusing on productivity, risk reduction and customised, data-driven support for farmers—especially small and marginal farmers—the Budget creates a strong foundation for technology-led services that can improve on-farm decision-making without adding to farmers’ capital burden.”

Arya.ag(Grain Commerce / Fintech)

Anand Chandra, Co-founder & Executive Director

“Bharat-VISTAAR brings the promise of making agri-advisory more intelligent, timely, and accessible at the farmgate. By integrating AI with AgriStack and ICAR advisories in multiple languages, it can support better decisions on crops, inputs, and markets, especially for smallholder and first-generation women farmers.

The Rural Women-Led Enterprises initiative, building on the Lakhpati Didi programme, takes this further by enabling the shift from subsistence livelihoods to ownership. In our experience, such enterprises succeed when they are deeply embedded in local agri-value chains, with access to working capital, market linkages, and autonomy over key decisions.

Many women-led groups are already leading the adoption of sustainable and climate-resilient practices. Strengthening them through enterprise support will generate both economic and environmental dividends. The Budget lays strong groundwork; execution will depend on how these initiatives reach real farms, in real time.”

Redacto.ai (Privacy / Document Redaction)

Shashank Karincheti, Co-founder & CPO

“The data center tax holiday till 2047 is a watershed moment for India’s digital economy. By incentivizing foreign cloud providers to process data onshore with a 15% safe harbour for related-party services, the government has effectively removed the biggest barrier to DPDP Act4 compliance. Until now, enterprises faced an impossible trade-off between global-scale cloud infrastructure and data localization requirements. This budget resolves that tension—more onshore data processing means consent management becomes enforceable, data principal rights become actionable, and cross-border transfer headaches reduce significantly. For privacy-conscious enterprises, especially in regulated sectors, this is the infrastructure foundation they’ve been waiting for.

However, data localization alone doesn’t equal privacy. The real work begins after data lands in India—robust consent management, third-party risk governance, and demonstrable accountability remain non-negotiable. Enterprises that treat onshore hosting as a checkbox will find themselves infrastructural when DPDP enforcement begins in earnest. The budget creates the infrastructure opportunity; building genuine privacy operations capability is what will separate compliant organizations from vulnerable ones.”

EOSGlobe (BPM / BPO)

Abhinav Arora, CEO

“Budget 2026 clearly positions India as a global hub for cloud and data services. Long-term tax certainty, a practical safe-harbour framework, and the requirement for local reseller participation make India far more attractive for global business. For the BPM sector, this strengthens our ability to scale delivery from India, expand beyond metros, and bring global work closer to skilled local talent.”

Matters.AI (Security / AI Observability)

Keshava Murthy, CEO & Co-founder

“Budget 2026 clearly signals the government’s intent to mainstream AI across governance, education, and agriculture—through the AI Mission, the Education-to-Employment Standing Committee, and platforms like Bharat-VISTAAR. As AI moves from experimentation into everyday workflows across public systems, enterprises will mirror this adoption internally. That shift brings a new challenge: organisations must gain visibility into how AI systems interact with sensitive data. The next phase of AI adoption will be defined not just by capability, but by oversight.”