In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, the term ‘Agentic AI’ has emerged as the next big frontier—one that promises to transform how machines collaborate with humans. At the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH), the TechForward series marked its second anniversary with a roundtable dedicated to demystifying this concept and exploring its real-world implications. According to Prof. Karthik Vaidhyanathan, whose research group has published over 20 papers on Agentic and Generative AI, the term is widely misunderstood. “It is neither a chatbot nor a model. Agentic AI is more of an ecosystem,” he explained. Unlike chatbots that merely respond to prompts, AI agents can reason, plan, use tools, remember context, and execute tasks autonomously. The challenge now lies not in building better models but in designing entire systems around them—integrating memory, governance, safety, and human oversight.

An exploratory study undertaken by IIIT-H’s Human Sciences Research Center (HSRC) has won the Best Paper Award at the 6th India Public Policy Network Conference for analysing how public procurement processes are quietly influencing the development and governance of AI systems in India. A research team from IIIT-H’s Human Sciences Research Centre (HSRC) comprising Prof. Aakansha Natani, Assistant Professor at HSRC, Siddhi Wadekar, PhD scholar, and Sujal Deoda, a dual-degree student pursuing BTech in Computer Science and MS in Computing and Human Sciences (CHD), explored precisely this question in their award-winning paper, ‘Emerging Institutional Pathways for AI Governance in India: Evidence from Public Procurement and Outsourcing.’ The paper received the Best Paper Award (Practice Track) at the India Public Policy Network (IPPN) Conference 2026 hosted by the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) on 8-11 June 2026.

This IIIT Hyderabad Masters student has recently been named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2026 for Cognitii, his AI-powered startup operating at the intersection of education, healthcare, and assistive technology, which has built India’s first AI and human infrastructure layer for special education. For Souvik Ghosh, a final-year MS by Research student at IIIT-H, an early morning message would forever be etched in his memory. He woke up in his Kolkata home a few weeks ago, to find his phone flooded with missed calls from co-founders, Jhillika Trisal and Falguni Shrivastava. Their startup, Cognitii, had featured in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in the Social Impact category. The challenge wasn’t in processing the news, but explaining to his parents why it mattered. “Coming from a middle-class family, the first thing I had to do was help them understand why Forbes was such good news,” he recalls with a smile. The AI innovation combines technology and expertise of diverse stakeholders to help schools and governments identify, support, and track at-risk special children.