Beyond the Headlines: How GradeLab Scaled Assessment Intelligence at the India AI Impact Summit 2026

Most of what you read about the India AI Impact Summit was Delhi traffic and Wi-Fi. Fair enough. But the bit that stayed with us was inside the hall. Five days in February, 16th to 20th. "AI for All" wasn't just on the banners. You could feel it. Startups, government bodies, schools, enterprises, NGOs. Everyone had a booth. Everyone had a question. Ours was one of many. We showed up at 8, left around 6. Legs hurt by day three. The room didn't.

The Human Grit Behind the Silicon

Expos are tiring. You stand. You demo. You repeat. February 16 to 20 was no different. What was different was who walked in. Not just tech people. Principals. Deans. Government officials. NGO leads. HR from big corporates. You get a principal in the morning and a VC in the afternoon. The summit had pulled in a real mix. That is on the organisers. They made "AI for All" feel like a real tent. We happened to be under it, talking about assessment and grading. The kind of stuff that usually stays in back offices. Here it was out in the open. That felt good.

A Spectrum That Surprised Even Us

The best thing about the summit was the spread. You’d expect a few ed-tech folks. We got way more.

Schools and coaching centres. Principals asking how to cut grading time without losing consistency. Universities and exam cells asking what automated assessment actually looks like when you still want humans in the loop. NGOs who need to show impact with data, not stories. Government people with big assessment mandates and real questions about security and scale. MNCs. HR and L&D teams. And yes, VCs too, looking at where "AI for All" goes next.

That mix doesn’t happen at every event. Credit to how the summit was put together. It wasn’t a single industry talking to itself. It felt like a slice of the country. Education, government, enterprise, all in one hall. That’s the positive we’ll remember. We were a small part of it.

From Expo Floor to What Happens Next

A week on, we’re still processing. The summit didn’t end when the booths came down. Follow-ups are coming in. From our side: Om’s out doing the in-person rounds. Government, large unis, corporates. Those deals still get done face to face. Akshat’s calendar is full of calls. Schools, coaching centres, smaller institutions. Everyone who picked up a card or scanned a QR. Jainil’s in the back end, turning those handshakes into actual onboarding. Integrations, rubrics, making sure when someone says yes they can go live without a mess. It’s a lot. But it’s the kind of lot you want after an event that actually worked.

If you want a bit of the vibe from the floor, we put together a short recap: India AI Impact Summit 2026 – GradeLab at the Expo. It’s not just us. You get a sense of the hall, the crowd, the energy.

Why the Event Mattered

The summit didn't create the demand. It put it in one room. The questions people asked were the same ones we have been hearing for a while. Can we grade at scale without burning out teachers? Can we measure talent in a way that is fair and usable? Can "AI for All" mean something on the ground, not just on a poster? Having so many sectors in one place made it clear this isn't a niche problem. It's everywhere. Education, government, enterprise. The event gave that a stage. We were glad to be on it. And the fact that follow-ups are still rolling in a week later says something about how seriously people took it.

What Comes Next

For us, the work continues. For the summit, we’re hoping it becomes a regular thing. India needed a stage like this. Diverse, serious, and not just about one sector. If you were there and we didn’t get to talk, reach out. If you weren’t, the door’s still open. Either way, the takeaway we’d give: the event was worth the traffic. The real story was inside.