Madhav Sheth on Building Ai+: A Smartphone Developed on Indian Infrastructure

Madhav Sheth has been leading international smartphone brands in India for many years, but now he is back with a significant twist—focusing on local infrastructure and data sovereignty. His new company, NxtQuantum, brings us Ai+, a smartphone running a custom OS that stores user information on Indian servers. In this conversation, he details the thought process behind the product, the government support through PLI, and what is needed to create a smartphone brand from scratch today.

What was the core idea behind launching Ai+?

The idea was to create a genuine Indian smartphone—hardware, software, cloud—all built or interreged locally. Ai+ is not just about price or specifications: it's about sovereignty! If you use this phone, we keep your user data in India, on servers approved by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). we also built our own mobile OS—NxtQuantum OS—which is heavily integrated with AI and has been tuned specifically for Indian users!

Were there any major challenges in building and launching this from scratch?

To be honest, not really. There was no such big challenge because we’ve been in this space for years. I knew what to do, where to build, and where to collaborate.

The ecosystem is already there—you just need the right intent and execution. Our team moved fast because we had clarity.

Are you leveraging the government’s PLI scheme

Yes, we are using PLI. It’s a great initiative and we’ve structured our manufacturing to take advantage of it. That includes scaling locally and making sure the value-add truly happens in India.

How are you implementing it? Any unique approach?

We’re using PLI-approved government factories in Noida. We’ve already set up 12–16 assembly lines with a capacity of around 12,000 to 15,000 phones per day. Currently, we’re doing about 8,000–10,000. We’re working closely with Indian partners to make this sustainable and scalable. The idea is to create infrastructure that Indian brands can own and grow with.

Let’s talk specs—what exactly are you offering under Ai+?

We’ve launched two models—Ai+ Pulse and Ai+ Nova 5G. Both come with a 6.7-inch HD+ display, 50MP dual AI camera, 5,000mAh battery, side fingerprint sensor, and expandable storage up to 1TB.

They run on MediaTek chipsets and are priced starting at ₹4,499. The Nova supports 5G and is under ₹7,500. They also support Gemini AI and are future-ready for Indian LLMs.

Privacy is a growing concern. How are you tackling that?

Privacy is built into the OS. We have a privacy dashboard that shows you, in real time, what app is using your mic, camera, location, etc. You can block access instantly. More importantly, your data doesn’t leave India. Everything is stored under the DPDP framework on Indian cloud infrastructure.

Beyond the smartphone, what is the larger vision?

We’re building an ecosystem. It’s not just a phone—it’s the OS, app store, services, developer tools, and after-sales network.

We want to give Indian users a platform they can trust, and developers a platform they can build on. This is just the start—we want Ai+ to be India’s contribution to the global AI-first smartphone era.