Ethna Ghosh, India Partnerships Lead with Renaissance Philanthropy, discusses the nonprofit organization’s operational strategy, her work and India’s role as a global hub for AI experimentation with Brent Phillips, Humanitarian AI Today podcast producer.Drawing on her deep roots in the Indian development sector, Ethna shares insights from her experience as a founding member of GivingPi, India's first family philanthropy network at Dasra, where she specialized in building strategic partnerships and advising families on high-impact giving. From this vantage point, she provides an insider’s perspective on India’s emergence as a science and technology pioneer and a premier real-world testing ground, where localized AI applications can be deployed across a diverse population of 1.4 billion people with immense cultural, geographic and linguistic diversity to address a myriad of social challenges.Elaborating on her role as Renaissance Philanthropy’s India Partnerships Lead, Ethna outlines how the organization accelerates scientific, technological and innovation breakthroughs by using a thesis-driven, time-bound fund model connecting donors with domain experts to tackle high-impact, underfunded projects. By empowering field leaders to identify and eliminate systemic bottlenecks to enable scalable change, the organizations acts as force multiplier to achieve large-scale, transformative impact rather than just deploying capital. By supporting a diverse portfolio of deep-science innovations, the organization seeks to spark a modern "Renaissance movement" where converging technologies like AI and space tech for example transform the global landscape.Offering insight into the keys to success in environments like India, Ethna emphasizes "bottom-up" approaches that prioritize deep collaboration between Samaj (society), Sarkar (government), and Bazar (market). Highlighting rural maternal health workers as a case study, Ethna points out that involving government entities is a non-negotiable in India for any initiative aiming to achieve true national scale and effectively engage the "last mile" of the population.Looking toward the future, Ghosh envisions a shift toward agentic and physical AI that moves beyond simple text prompts to become a voice-enabled "buddy" for those with limited digital literacy. She advocates for the development of inclusive models that strip away linguistic and gender biases to provide safe, life-changing access to justice, healthcare, and government services. This vision ensures that technology serves as a bridge for equality, providing every citizen with a reliable companion to navigate a rapidly changing world. She concludes with a powerful call for radical collaboration among foundations and NGOs, urging stakeholders to move past silos and genuinely partner to eliminate the bottlenecks holding back progress.