AI Can Think Fast — But Can It Feel? Sathi Roy Brings the Consciousness Conversation to New Delhi

As India cements itself as a global AI powerhouse, one founder is asking a different question entirely — not what AI can do, but what it’s quietly doing to us. Here’s what unfolded when the conversation moved from Bangkok to New Delhi.

What Happened in New Delhi?

Following its opening event in Bangkok, Our Highest Mantra (OHM) brought its global AI and Consciousness speaking tour to New Delhi, in partnership with The AI Collective. The private gathering brought together founders, investors, technologists, and creators to explore how humanity evolves alongside increasingly intelligent machines — a conversation that’s moved well beyond policy rooms into boardrooms and startup communities across the country.

Leading the discussion were OHM Founder and CEO Sathi Roy and James Pimentel-Pinto, UK Regional Director of The AI Collective and Apple’s first iPhone developer in Europe, who now serves as OHM’s Chief Product Officer.

Who Is Sathi Roy?

Roy isn’t approaching this topic as an outsider. She spent over a decade scaling companies — including one that grew from a $30 million to $7 billion valuation — worked within a billionaire’s family office, led teams across the US and Asia, and has mentored over 1,000 people. She founded OHM after witnessing firsthand what that relentless pace does to the people driving it, describing how she watched high-achievers hit their goals only to end up scattered and dysregulated rather than steady.

The Core Argument: Intelligence Isn’t Consciousness

Roy pushed back on a common conflation in the AI conversation — that intelligence and consciousness are interchangeable. While AI can organize information and solve problems at massive scale, she argues consciousness is something different entirely: lived experience shaped by memory, emotion, intuition, and relationships.

Her more pressing concern isn’t job displacement, but something subtler — the risk of quietly outsourcing our own agency, curiosity, and comfort with uncertainty, since much of human growth comes precisely from sitting with the unknown. In her view, AI doesn’t create instability; it amplifies whatever internal state already exists, meaning scattered founders get more scattered, while grounded ones extend their clarity further.

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Why India, and Why Now?

Roy noted that India occupies a unique position in this conversation, combining demographic scale, deep engineering talent, and a philosophical tradition that has explored the nature of consciousness for thousands of years — one she frames as a set of internal tools for regulation and self-inquiry rather than mere heritage. She believes sharing that wisdom thoughtfully could be one of India’s most meaningful contributions on the global AI stage.

Nathasha Kumar, Founder of Maloka, echoed this sentiment, praising Roy as someone building from within the AI industry while staying rooted in intention rather than pure optimization.

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