BENGALURU, India, Nov. 5, 2025 -- Dr Suborno Bose, one of India's leading AI evangelists, who has brought new tech-driven learning into classrooms, up close and centre, to pitchfork AI as a companion and catalyst for professional efficiency, was recognised as the AI Policy Leader of the Year 2025 by an arm of India's largest media conglomerate.
The Economic Times Making AI Work Awards 2025 recognised those turning AI ambition into real-world impact. It celebrated the leaders, innovators, and enterprises driving measurable transformation through scalable, responsible, and outcome-focused AI solutions.
This recognition to Dr Bose, Chairman, International Institute of Hotel Management (IIHM) and the Indismart Group worldwide, highlights his pioneering contribution in shaping a human-centered AI integration model within hospitality and higher education — an approach that proposes policy leadership can emerge just as much from academic institutions and classrooms as from government and industry boardrooms.
In acknowledgment of the award, Dr Bose said, "I am deeply humbled to be conferred the AI Policy Leader of the Year 2025, award. I view it not as a personal accolade but as an acknowledgment of what Indian education has achieved through courage and experimentation. This recognition validates a larger idea — that policy leadership today is not confined to government corridors. It can emerge from classrooms, labs and institutions that dare to reimagine learning through technology. What began as an experiment within IIHM and has been successful, has evolved into a policy model for responsible, human-centric AI integration in education."
From Policy to Practice
As discussions on AI grow louder, Dr Bose is clear that responsible AI in hospitality isn't simply a matter of inserting 'ethics' into code — it requires designing systems with intent, where technology supports people rather than performs for them. He argues that AI should stay largely invisible to guests and practical for workers, not as a grand showcase of innovation but as an unobtrusive layer that strengthens human connection.
Rather than allowing technology to overshadow service, his approach positions AI as an operational enabler that enhances precision, sustainability, and situational awareness while preserving the emotional dimension at the heart of hospitality.
The underlying claim is central to his philosophy, that education itself functions as a living policy — one that influences industry practices by shaping mindset and behaviour before graduates even enter the workforce. "Policy has meaning only when it reaches people," he often says, and within IIHM, responsibility, sustainability and guest empathy are designed to be practiced as essential competencies rather than added later as corrections.
This principle shapes IIHM's learning ecosystem, where students engage in AI-driven hospitality simulations, sustainability and zero-waste labs, empathy-oriented training, and tools such as the GreenRoute Sustainable Travel GPT and the SDG GPT Builder.
AI in Education — Beyond IIHM
For Dr Bose, AI in education has never been confined to IIHM. It represents a deeper process — a reimagining of how India can educate and empower its vast youth population through technology and empathy. Under his leadership, the Government of West Bengal entrusted IIHM and Indismart Digital Pvt Ltd to train students in AI Essentials and Soft Skills across 50 government and government-aided schools. This initiative, implemented under the Paschim Banga Samagra Shiksha Mission, introduces AI literacy and human-value learning to school students who had never encountered this technology before.
"This is not a project; it is a trust," Dr Bose says. "The government's confidence in an academic institution shows that policy can begin in classrooms."
From AI Classrooms to AI Citizenship
Dr Bose's vision extends beyond institutional boundaries. Through Indismart Digital's initiatives like AI for Schools and AI for All – AI by India, the mission is to create AI citizenship — where every young Indian can access tools, mentorship, and literacy in emerging technologies. The aim is not just to teach students to use AI, but to enable them to lead with it — responsibly and inclusively.
The India Moment
What began as an educational innovation has become part of a much larger national narrative. India today stands at the cusp of what Dr Bose calls "the AI moment in education." With the world's youngest population, India's biggest challenge — and its biggest opportunity — is preparing millions of students to be technologically fluent, ethically aware, and professionally resilient.
This movement goes far beyond hospitality. It aims to build a new generation of tech-mastered professionals whose competence can improve not only their own lives but also the communities and enterprises they serve. In Dr Bose's view, "policy works only when it creates impact" — and that process has already begun.
Through IIHM's research hubs, NamAIste GPT, sustainability labs, and government partnerships, this philosophy has evolved into what he describes as "education as policy in action." Each innovation becomes a prototype for how AI can enable inclusion, not inequality.
India's Contribution to Global AI Ethics
In his book Harmonising Human Touch and AI: Tourism & Hospitality, Dr Bose argues that AI must not be treated as a replacement for human skill but as a reinforcement of human spirit. "AI may become the brain of the world," he writes, "but the heart will always remain human."
This belief has positioned India as a thought leader in responsible AI integration — an area now drawing global attention. IIHM's Global Knowledge Sharing Declaration on AI in Hospitality, signed by 60 countries, has built a transnational framework of collaboration across universities, startups, and policymakers.
As he said in his World AI Day address, "AI must remain invisible to the user, inclusive to the learner, and indispensable to the nation." For him, the true success of India's AI movement will be measured not in the sophistication of its algorithms, but in the number of lives uplifted through education, empathy, and opportunity.
As Dr Bose said "This award is a call to action to ensure that future of India's AI revolution will not be written in code alone — it will be written in classrooms, in communities, and in the courage to imagine a smarter, kinder tomorrow"
For more information, visit https://www.iihm.ac.in/
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