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India is rising as AI trailblazer, steering Lenovo's global strategy: Lenovo CMO Flynn Maloy
Lenovo ISG’s CMO Flynn Maloy says India is leading the charge in artificial intelligence, offering lessons in agility, experimentation, and impact. From hospitals to hyperscale, here's why the world is watching India’s AI playbook.
According to Flynn Maloy, India has become a global reference point, with Lenovo now actively exporting best practices - and even failures - emerging from Indian deployments.
India isn't just riding the artificial intelligence wave - it is shaping it. According to Flynn Maloy, Chief Marketing Officer, Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group, India is emerging as a global trailblazer in AI. He believes the country's early and aggressive embrace of AI is putting it ahead of global peers.
"India has leaned in, adopted early, experimented, and then started to build foundational AI ahead of most of its peers in Asia," said Maloy in an interview with Storyboard18's Shibani Gharat. According to him, India has become a global reference point, with Lenovo now actively exporting best practices - and even failures - emerging from Indian deployments.
"We're taking some of the best practices, the fail-fast experiments, and the foundational building of AI from India and exporting it because India is at the front of the wave," Maloy added.
This leadership isn't by chance. As the country evolves into a tech and innovation hub, its AI use cases - from finance to healthcare - are helping global tech companies like Lenovo fine-tune strategies for both emerging and mature markets. Whether it's building smarter hospitals or optimising financial services, India is providing real-world models of what AI can look like at scale.
Lenovo's big bet in this landscape is what Maloy calls "democratising AI" - taking it out of the public cloud and deploying it closer to the data source. Think hospitals, schools, and retail chains where real-time insights are needed on-site.
“We often talk about not having to take your data to the AI up in the clouds but rather bringing the AI out to your data and into that environment—whether it’s the hospital, a school, or a store,” he explained. “That’s what we call democratising AI.”
This edge-to-core approach, Maloy asserts, is where Lenovo stands out - delivering AI across devices, from tablets to servers, and even to smartphones. In a world where environments are hybrid and increasingly decentralised, Lenovo’s infrastructure solutions are designed to support AI wherever it’s needed.
Maloy’s perspective reflects a broader evolution in the CMO role - one that is less about glossy pitches and more about thought leadership and technical fluency.
“We're not just telling you our corner of the room and here’s what we’re doing. We’re also educating because we’re all learning about this together,” he said. “It’s our job as one of the leading IT vendors in the world to bring forward what we’re learning as we learn it.”
That sense of collective learning is central to how Lenovo now engages clients. B2B marketers, he stressed, must now become content experts - fluent in cloud, certified in platforms like AWS and Azure, and capable of translating complex tech into business value.
“I am AWS certified, Azure certified, ITSM certified. You learn the content because if you can understand the content, you get more fluent in the language. And if you get more fluent in the language, then you can speak the language of the people you're marketing to,” he said.
Maloy sees this as critical not just for connecting with CIOs and CTOs, but for shaping narratives that resonate with business heads and decision-makers.
“You’re not saying, ‘Buy my thing, it’s 0.5 seconds faster.’ You’re saying, ‘Here’s how to be a better bank with AI. Here’s how to be a better financial company with AI,’” he explained. “You need to understand and translate that, and then turn it into a message that isn’t just for IT.”
Despite leading global marketing for Lenovo ISG, Maloy’s gaze is firmly fixed on local insights - especially from India.
“Seeing the progress that India is making, we find ourselves looking at Indian case studies and Indian IT works,” he said. “It’s providing great examples and use cases on how to do it and also how not to do it.”
Ultimately, the future of marketing - particularly in tech - isn’t just about targeting IT buyers. It’s about shaping stories that resonate across entire organisations. “You’re not just translating IT to IT; you’re understanding it, and then you can talk to the non-IT folks.”
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