Seven working groups of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) submitted the first edition of IndiaAI report today. The report was officially handed over to Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Skill Development & Entrepreneurship and Electronics & IT. He expressed that this report is set to serve as India’s guiding roadmap for the development of its AI ecosystem.

“After months of dedicated research, the seven working groups that were constituted to build the core goals of the IndiaAI program, have submitted their formal report today. This comprehensive report lays out what will be the fulcrum of the IndiaAI strategy that was envisaged by PM Modi. He had talked about India for AI and AI for India. Through this roadmap IndiaAI will work to be a kinetic enabler of the 1 trillion dollar digital economy,” the Minister said.

The Government of India’s approach to AI has been holistic and ambitious, as evidenced by the breadth and scope of government interventions under the umbrella programme – IndiaAI.

IndiaAI has a mission-centric approach which ensures a precise and cohesive strategy to bridge the gaps in existing AI ecosystem viz-a-viz Compute infrastructure, Data, AI financing, Research and Innovation, targeted Skilling and institutional capacity for Data to maximize the potential of AI for advancing India’s progress. 

Minister Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar highlighted how IndiaAI will not only catalyse and support the startup and entrepreneurship ecosystem but also other areas like that of India datasets program and India AI Compute Platform.

“Apart from supporting startups and providing skilling programs, the India AI program will comprise several key components. One crucial component will be that of India Datasets Platform, which will be one of the largest collections of anonymized datasets that will be used by Indian researchers to train their multi parameter models. Then there will be the India AI Compute Platform, a public-private partnership project that will create substantial GPU (Graphics processing unit) capacity for our startups and researchers. In addition to skilling, India AI will also support the development of AI chips in partnership with the Semicon India program,” the Minister further added.

The working groups detailed out the operational aspects of establishing Centers of Excellence (CoEs), and the institutional framework on governing data collection, management, processing and storage by the National Data Management Office (NDMO). The report also has recommendations on how India can leverage its demographic dividend and play to its strengths as an IT superpower to further the penetration of AI skills in the country, strengthening of the AI compute infrastructure in India to support the AI innovation through public-private partnerships (PPPs).

The report provides the recommendations on Design Linked Incentive (DLI) Scheme that aims to offer financial incentives as well as design infrastructure support to domestic companies and start- ups/ MSMEs.

The objective of this exercise was to undertake a comprehensive study of all the pillars of IndiaAI and to identify tangible next action items that need to be worked on to achieve the goal of “AI for all”.

Minister Rajeev Chandrasekar announced the launch of the inaugural Global India AI Summit in December 2023, aligning with PM Modi’s vision of “India for AI and AI for India.”

The Minister said, “Global India AI summit will be held on 10^th December 2023 where influential leaders and participants will join from the AI and the overall tech ecosystem. Our approach towards AI is not about following a trend, we have a deep rooted belief and commitment that AI is going to be a kinetic enabler of our 1 trillion dollar economy goal. It will also create deep capabilities within our startup and research ecosystem, in terms of real life AI use cases that we want to develop. I think this is a good launching pad for us to develop an overall comprehensive framework for policy, financing and resources.

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