Samsung is banking on its India research hub to lead its global efforts in voice-first artificial intelligence, placing Indian engineers at the core of developing its Galaxy AI ecosystem.
At a media roundtable in Bengaluru, Mohan Rao from the Samsung R&D Institute India (SRI-B) said that India is one of the most important sites outside Korea for the company’s AI projects.
“When it is going to be completely voice-first, it depends on the research, research breakthroughs. A lot of research is going on at the moment,” Rao said. “We had so many tough challenges in front of us to make the AI models run on the device. AI native platforms need to emerge and then bring this natural language ASRs to run very nicely. Then we can think about the completely voice-first phones.”
Experts across the technology ecosystem believe voice will soon become the main way consumers interact with AI. IndiaAI Mission’s CEO Abhishek Singh recently said in an interview that they are preparing to build voice-first AI models for Indian languages. Globally, companies like Google and OpenAI are also prioritising voice interfaces. For Samsung, which integrates AI into its consumer hardware, this focus could give its devices an advantage over competitors.
Rao added that engineers in India are leading the push, outside Korea, to create a voice-first mobile interface ready for AI.
Rao explained that Samsung’s research is moving in two directions. “One is personalisation for each individual—if AI can assist my personal needs, my productivity should improve. The second is to move from smartphones to AI phones. This would need a new platform, and our Galaxy AI platform is the base for it. AI is not like touch interfaces, and we’re trying to first understand this transition and then build for customers.”
R&D scale
Rao did not reveal the number of engineers working at Samsung’s India R&D centre or details of its annual investment in the country. The company also did not comment on the government’s recently announced ₹1 trillion incentive scheme to boost private R&D spending.
Globally, Samsung reported spending $24.1 billion on R&D in 2024, which accounted for 11.6 per cent of its $207.3 billion revenue. In comparison, Tata Consultancy Services, India’s largest technology company by revenue, spent only 1.1 per cent on R&D last year, showing the wide gap between India and global peers in research investment.
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