Why India Needs More AI4Bharats [Video]

When a country wants to build AI, one of the most important ingredients is the need for a robust industry-academia partnership. The US and European countries have already identified it, and China too has also been capitalising on it. But when it comes to India, there is a visible lack of such initiatives. 

One prominent initiative taking wings in India is AI4Bharat, which started as a collaboration between IIT Madras and Nandan Nilkeni’s ekStep foundation. It is sponsored by Bhashini, Microsoft, Google, and NVIDIA and its contribution to the Indic open source AI community has been tremendous. But the problem is, it is the only prominent one in the country so far. 

In a podcast with AIM, Adarsh Shirawalmath, the founder of Tensoic, and the creator of Kannada Llama, said that he is very inspired by the work that AI4Bharat is doing in the country. “We need more AI4Bharats in the country,” he …