AI Has an Identity Crisis and Context is the Kingmaker
The India AI Impact Summit 2026 at Bharat Mandapam was a window into a shifting power dynamic. As a co-founder of a company that’s building the context engine for enterprise AI, I’ve watched the "AI Rush" move through stages of awe and frantic experimentation. But in New Delhi, a signal became deafeningly clear that the era of "Model Supremacy" is over and the era of "Contextual Intelligence" has begun.
In the current rush, we are seeing a massive "Context Gap." We have models that can process everything but understand nothing about the specific intent of a business. Here is how context is emerging as the ultimate kingmaker, as decoded from the signals at the summit.
1. The Death of the Generic Prompt
For the past two years, the industry was focused on making LLMs faster and larger. The India AI Summit flipped this script. By introducing the MANAV Vision (Ethics, Accountability, Sovereignty, Accessibility, and Legitimacy), the narrative has shifted from what the machine can do to how it fits into the human fabric.
This is evident in the "Human Capital" Chakra. The signal is that AI is no longer a standalone tool; it is a "super-utility" that must be grounded in the user's specific reality. In a country with 22 official languages and thousands of dialects, a "generic" AI is a useless AI. Context is the bridge between a hallucinating chatbot and a reliable business partner.
2. Startup Signals: Context as the Competitive Moat
Some notable startups that gained attention at the summit - Zeko AI, Sarvam, and Evivve weren't just selling AI. They were selling Domain-Specific Reasoning.
• Zeko AI scans resumes but more importantly, it maps the "Narrative Alignment" between a candidate and a company’s core culture. That is context acting as a filter for high-stakes decision-making.
• Sarvam AI and Gnani.ai are building "Sovereign AI" which is about understanding the local business customs, legal nuances, and social frameworks of the Global South.
• Evivve demonstrated that before you deploy a model, you must assess the "Cognitive Readiness" of the organization.
The lesson? Your AI has to understand your unique context, otherwise it’s just noise at scale.
3. The "Context Gap" and the Narrative Control Layer
As we move toward Agentic AI, the stakes get higher. An AI agent that can take actions (like drafting an investor pitch or managing a supply chain) is dangerous without a map. That map is your Narrative.
This is the core thesis we see manifesting at stotio.io. In the AI rush, "Strategy Drift" is the biggest risk. When you scale decisions across teams and tools, the original vision often gets lost in translation.
Narrative Intelligence, as pioneered by stotio’s Strategy OS, is essentially the Control Layer for AI. It ensures that context is preserved from the vision to the final execution. Whether it’s using PitchReady to align investor belief, Sales Catalyst to equip teams with deal-winning narratives, or Business Review to track the sanctity of KPIs, the goal is the same: Contextual Integrity.
The India AI Summit proved that the "Democratic Diffusion of AI" (as stated in the New Delhi Declaration) only works if the technology can be localized, personalized, and grounded.
This resonates with stotio’s long term vision: to democratize growth narratives. For founders, operators, and growth leaders who deserve access to structured narrative intelligence, the kind that aligns vision, decision, and execution in one continuous loop to unlock growth.
Because when narrative intelligence becomes accessible, growth stops being accidental. It becomes designed based on your context.
The Verdict: Narrative is the Moat
For leaders today, the challenge isn't "How do I use AI?" but "How do I ensure my AI understands my context?" In a world where everyone has access to the same models, your Narrative Intelligence is the only moat you have left.
"Context is the difference between an AI that guesses and an AI that knows."