INDIA’S AI PROGRESS

INDIA’S AI PROGRESS

Context:

• India has taken big steps in Artificial Intelligence (AI) through its IndiaAI Mission.
• Recently, the country significantly increased its AI computing power (GPUs) and selected more startups to build India-specific AI models.

KEY MILESTONES & VISION

• Increased Compute Capacity: India’s total AI computing power, measured in GPUs (Graphics Processing Units), has now crossed 34,000 GPUs. This is a major increase.
• New Foundation Models: Three more Indian startups have been chosen to develop “Foundation Models” – these are like the core AI brains that other AI tools are built upon.
• Minister’s Vision: Union Minister for Electronics & Information Technology, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw, emphasized democratizing technology. This means making AI accessible to many people, not just a few, so more can use it to create new solutions and opportunities.
• Global Aim: The Minister urged the selected AI teams to aim for a top-five global position in their areas.

COMPREHENSIVE ECOSYSTEM

The IndiaAI Mission aims to build a complete AI system in India, including:

• Foundation models (the core AI).
• Compute capacity (processing power).
• Safety standards (ethical and responsible use).
• Talent development (training skilled people).
• Reverse Brain Drain: The mission also aims to bring talented Indians back to India.

DEVELOPMENT OF INDIGENOUS FOUNDATION MODELS

The IndiaAI Foundation Model pillar focuses on creating AI models trained on India-specific data.

• Proposals Received: By April 30, 2025, 506 proposals were received for this initiative.
• Sarvam AI (Already Selected):
  • Selected on April 26, 2025, to build India’s own Sovereign LLM Ecosystem (a large language model).
  • Developing an open-source 120 billion-parameter AI model.
  • Aims to improve government services and public access through tools like “2047: Citizen Connect” and “AI4Pragati.”
  • Previously launched Sarvam-1 (2 billion parameters) and Sarvam-M (24 billion parameters).

THREE NEW STARTUPS SELECTED

1. Soket AI: Will develop India’s first open-source 120 billion-parameter foundation model. It will be optimized for India’s many languages and used in areas like defense, healthcare, and education.
2. Gnani AI: Will build a 14 billion-parameter Voice AI foundation model. This model will process speech in many languages in real-time with advanced understanding.
3. Gan AI: Will create a 70 billion-parameter multilingual foundation model focused on “Superhuman TTS (text-to-speech),” aiming to be better than current global leaders.

EXPANSION OF COMPUTE CAPACITY

• Significant Addition: An additional 15,916 GPUs have been added to the existing 18,417 GPUs, making a total of 34,333 GPUs.
• Industry Partnership: This expansion was done with the help of industry partners.
• Purpose: This increased computing power will provide a shared AI platform for training AI models and running AI solutions. This is vital for developing Indian AI models and solutions tailored to India’s needs.
• Contributing Bidders: Seven companies have offered their services for this compute capacity: Cyfuture India Pvt. Ltd., Ishan Infotech Ltd., Locuz Enterprise Solutions Ltd., Netmagic IT Services Pvt. Ltd., Sify Digital Services Ltd., Vensysco Technologies Ltd., and Yotta Data Services Pvt. Ltd.

IndiaAI I4C CyberGuard AI Hackathon

• Initiative: Part of the IndiaAI Applications Development Initiative.
• Organizers: Jointly with the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), Ministry of Home Affairs.
• Outcome: Developed AI-based solutions to:
  • Improve how cybercrime complaints are classified.
  • Help find new crime patterns, trends, and common methods on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCRP).
• Capabilities: These AI models can understand complex inputs like handwritten police reports, screenshots, and audio calls, making analysis faster and more accurate.

ABOUT INDIA AI

• Implementation Agency: IndiaAI is an Independent Business Division under MeitY (Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology).
• Mission:
  • Make AI benefits available to everyone.
  • Strengthen India’s leadership in AI.
  • Achieve technological self-reliance (making India independent in AI).
  • Ensure AI is used ethically and responsibly.

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