The NDTV World Summit 2026 brought together political, technology and entertainment voices for a series of headline-making sessions, headlined by a keynote address from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. During that address, Modi jabbed at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi by calling him a ‘failed product’ — a remark that drew a sharp counter from Shashi Tharoor. Elsewhere on the programme, actor Kriti Sanon discussed ‘The Making of a Modern Star,’ and Microsoft AI expert Nicholas Butts warned that the AI threat to India is ‘very real.’
The NDTV World Summit is the flagship conference organised by NDTV, one of India’s best-known news broadcasters, and has over the years become a platform where global and Indian leaders debate the defining issues of the time. This background is general context; the specific facts about the 2026 edition below come from the news coverage cited at the top of this article. For its 2026 edition, the summit assembled an unusually wide mix of speakers — from the Prime Minister of India to a Microsoft AI specialist and a leading Bollywood actor — reflecting how the event now spans politics, technology and culture.
Based on the reporting available, the summit’s speaker list spanned government, politics, entertainment and artificial intelligence:
| Speaker | Role / affiliation | Session highlight |
|---|---|---|
| Narendra Modi | Prime Minister of India | Keynote address; top 10 quotes from 2-3nm chips to a new world order |
| Rahul Gandhi / Shashi Tharoor | Congress leaders | Exchange over Modi’s ‘failed product’ jab and Tharoor’s counter |
| Kriti Sanon | Film actor | ‘The Making of a Modern Star’ |
| Nicholas Butts | Microsoft AI expert | ‘Threat is very real to India’ — AI risk warning |
The presence of these contrasting voices made the 2026 edition one of the most-discussed NDTV World Summit programmes to date, generating separate highlight packages from NDTV’s news, Profit and political desks.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered the summit’s headline address, and the full text of his speech was published on the PM India website under ‘PM’s address in NDTV World Summit.’ Coverage highlighted his top 10 quotes from the speech, which ranged across technology, industry and geopolitics.
Two of the most-discussed subjects in PM Modi’s remarks, as flagged by NDTV Profit, were:
Beyond these, the full set of ten quotes covered the breadth of his address, which has been treated as a key political and policy statement of the moment.
One of the political flashpoints of the NDTV World Summit 2026 came when PM Modi directed a ‘failed product’ jab at Rahul Gandhi during his address. The remark was quickly politicised: Shashi Tharoor responded with a counter, and the back-and-forth — reported by NDTV under the headline framing ‘To PM Modi’s “Failed Product” Jab At Rahul Gandhi, A Shashi Tharoor Counter’ — became one of the summit’s most-read stories, illustrating how quickly summit remarks travel into India’s ongoing political contest.
Actor Kriti Sanon was among the entertainment voices on the NDTV World Summit 2026 programme, leading a session on ‘The Making of a Modern Star.’ The session, highlighted by NDTV, explored what it takes to build and sustain stardom in today’s film industry — a theme that reflects the summit’s expansion beyond politics and business into popular culture.
AI was a major theme at the NDTV World Summit 2026, and one of the most striking contributions came from Nicholas Butts, identified by NDTV as a Microsoft AI expert. Butts delivered a blunt assessment of the AI threat landscape, telling the audience — in terms reproduced in NDTV’s headline — that the ‘threat is very real to India.’ His comments put AI risk to India at the centre of the summit’s technology discussions.
Highlights of the NDTV World Summit 2026 have been published across NDTV’s platforms: NDTV covered the event’s main sessions, NDTV Profit focused on the PM Modi quotes, and the PM India website carried the full address text. Readers looking for the summit’s key quotes, video clips and analysis can start with those sources.
It is worth noting what the available headlines do not state: the exact dates and venue of the 2026 summit are not specified in the coverage cited here, nor are full transcripts of the individual sessions. This article summarises the event’s most-reported moments, and readers should consult NDTV’s own summit pages for the complete programme.
The cited headlines identify the event as the NDTV World Summit 2026 and confirm that PM Modi delivered an address at it, but they do not state exact dates or the venue. Coverage appeared on NDTV, NDTV Profit and the PM India website, so readers should check NDTV's official summit pages for scheduling details.
During his NDTV World Summit 2026 address, PM Modi jabbed at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, with coverage framing the remark as calling him a 'failed product.' Shashi Tharoor hit back with a counter, and the exchange became one of the summit's most-discussed political moments.
Coverage highlighted PM Modi's top 10 quotes from the summit, which included remarks about 2-3nm chips — advanced semiconductor technology — alongside talk of a new world order, reflecting his framing of technology and geopolitics in the address.
Nicholas Butts, identified as a Microsoft AI expert, appeared at the NDTV World Summit 2026 and delivered a stark warning that the AI threat is 'very real to India,' putting the risks of artificial intelligence to the country at the centre of the event's technology debate.
Actor Kriti Sanon took part in a session titled 'The Making of a Modern Star' at the NDTV World Summit 2026, discussing stardom in the contemporary film industry, with NDTV publishing the highlights of the conversation.
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