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Nikhil Kamath advises 17-year-olds to build on emerging AI technologies: 'I would build on the application layer'
Kamath said young people today have advantage over previous generations because they can access learning resources online, use AI to understand any subject.
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Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath recently shared advice for young people entering the artificial intelligence (AI) era, saying he would focus on building applications and services using emerging technologies if he were 17 today.
Speaking at the NDTV World Summit 2026, Kamath said AI and the internet have made education more accessible, significantly changing the value of a formal college degree. Kamath, who dropped out of conventional education himself, said young people today have an advantage over previous generations because they can access learning resources online and use AI tools to understand almost any subject.
“To be fair, the one big advantage for a 17-year-old today versus 20 years ago, I think education has become largely democratic. Today, if I want to learn about something, I could use AI, I could use the internet, and almost anything I want to learn about, if I so choose to, is available freely,” he said.
“The delta of going to a formal institution like a college has probably dropped significantly from then to now,” he added.
(Also Read: 'I don't know what will happen 5 years from now': Nikhil Kamath on whether he would marry someday)
Nikhil Kamath’s advice to young people
Explaining what he would do if he were 17 today, Kamath said he would look for opportunities created by technological advances, particularly by developing products and services that build on new technology platforms.
“Well, if I was 17 today and I were to be given a different set of options that exist today, I would probably try to build something on top of the technological changes that are happening in the West. I think there is opportunity there,” he said.
“I don’t think we have come to it yet, but I would focus on building something on the application or services layers sitting on top of the new tech stacks,” he added.
At the Summit, Kamath acknowledged that competing with global AI leaders would be difficult because of the enormous amount of risk capital available to companies in the US and China.
"I don't see how an Indian company, or for that matter, any company outside of those two or three countries where there is that much risk capital, having a fair shot at competing in that layer," he said.
However, he said that he sees potential for Indian companies to build AI inference businesses using open-source models and computing infrastructure.
