Bhashini CEO Amitabh Nag Gets Charge As Director Of IndiaAI

SUMMARY

Amitabh Nag, the chief executive officer of the Digital India Bhashini Division, has been given additional charge as the director of the recently launched AIKosha (India AI Datasets Platform) and IndiaAI Applications Development initiative

Nag has been working with Bhashini as CEO since March 2023, overseeing the strategic planning and execution of the platform’s initiatives

Before taking up the chief executive’s role at Bhashini, Nag had worked with other government bodies, including electronics and IT ministry, agriculture and farmers’ welfare ministry

“I’m given the additional charge as director of India Dataset Platform (AIKosha) & Application Development initiative) at IndiaAI!,” Nag said in a LinkedIn post.

Nag has been working with Bhashini as CEO since March 2023, overseeing the strategic planning and execution of the platform’s initiatives. He is also actively a director at Digital India Corporation, a member of the GPAI Working Group, as well as an independent director at National Credit Guarantee Trustee Company Ltd.

Before taking up the chief executive’s role at Bhashini, he had worked with other government bodies, including electronics and IT ministry, agriculture and farmers’ welfare ministry.

With about 43 years of experience across diverse industries, both public and private, he has worked with MNCs such as Tata Consultancy Services, HP and Coforge, among others.

AIKosha: AIKosha was launched earlier this month under the IndiaAI Mission, offering a repository of 300 datasets, 80 AI models and other tools to foster AI innovation in the country. The portal also features AI sandbox capabilities via integrated development environment along with tools and tutorials.

Additionally, it is equipped with features such as content discoverability, scoring of datasets, permission based access and security mechanisms, secure APIs and firewalls.

This is being offered to startups, researchers, students, startups and government agencies, allowing them to access AI compute, network, storage and cloud services at “discounted rates.”

Eligible AI users will receive up to 40% subsidy on AI compute services on cloud.

Recently, IndiaAI Mission received over 120 additional bids to build foundational models trained on Indian datasets, as of March 15, bringing the overall number of applications received to 187.

Under the IndiaAI Mission, the Centre has launched several other key initiatives, including the IndiaAI Compute Portal, which will offer affordable AI compute, network, storage and cloud services.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Lok Sabha secretariat signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to develop an AI-powered solution, the Sansad Bhashini, owing to better democratise parliamentary operations, a week ago.

Centre’s Push To AI: This also comes at a time when the Centre is giving a huge push to the development of AI models in the country through its IndiaAI mission.

In January, union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw reportedly said that India is planning to build its own domestic large language model (LLM) as part of the INR 10,037 Cr IndiaAI Mission.

The government has also selected 10 companies that will supply 18,693 graphics processing units or GPUs — high end chips needed to develop machine learning tools that can go into developing a foundational model.

As per Inc42, the homegrown GenAI market is expected to see a major boom in the coming years and will likely cross the $17 Bn mark by 2030.