Cabinet Approves IndiaAI Mission, Allocates INR 10,372 Cr To Spur AI Innovation

As artificial intelligence (AI) mania grips the world, the Union Cabinet on Thursday (March 7) approved the IndiaAI Mission with an allocation of INR 10,372 Cr over the course of next five years.

The funds will be used to foster innovation in the homegrown AI ecosystem and implement the Mission’s vision via a public-private partnership (PPP) model. 

The government said that a part of the outlay will also be utilised to facilitate funding for emerging AI startups and spur innovation in the sector.

“This financial outlay will fortify the IndiaAI Startup Financing mechanism, facilitating streamlined access to funding for budding AI startups and catalysing their journey from product development to commercialisation. The proposal also includes funding provisions for industry-led AI projects aimed at fostering social impact, propelling innovation and entrepreneurship,” a government statement said.

Addressing media, commerce minister Piyush Goyal said that the funds will also be utilised to create a marketplace for AI in India to bring startups, academia and other stakeholders in one place.

Goyal said that a one-stop-shop unified data platform will be established to help startups access non-personal data of users.  

Meanwhile, minister of state (MoS) for electronics and information technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that the financial outlay will benefit Indian citizens, create a robust tech ecosystem in the states and contribute to the expansion of the country’s economy.

As per the Centre, the allocation will cover initiatives such as IndiaAI Compute Capacity, IndiaAI Innovation Centre (IAIC), IndiaAI Datasets Platform, IndiaAI Application Development Initiative, IndiaAI FutureSkills, IndiaAI Startup Financing, and Safe & Trusted AI.

“AI is going to be the kinetic enabler for India’s digital economy… I am grateful and thankful to the PM for the approval of more than INR 10,000 Cr for the India AI program, which will catalyse India’s AI ecosystem and position it as a force shaping the future of AI for India and for the world,” added Chandrasekhar.

The IndiaAI Mission comprises the following pillars:

• IndiaAI Compute Capacity: It envisions building a cutting-edge, scalable AI computing infrastructure by deploying more than 10,000 Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) through PPP model
• IndiaAI Innovation Centre (IAIC): With this, the Centre is looking to create a leading academic institution to retain top research talent, develop and deploy indigenous large multimodal models (LMMs) and domain-specific models
• IndiaAI Datasets Platform: This platform will be developed by IndiaAI’s independent business division (IBD) and will look to enhance accessibility, quality, and utility of public sector datasets
• IndiaAI FutureSkills: This program will focus on expanding the accessibility of graduate and post-graduate AI programs as well establishing AI Labs to impart foundational-level courses in the domain

The development comes five months after Chandrasekhar, in November 2023, hinted that the IndiaAI programme would be launched to encourage use of AI by Indian startups to solve local problems.

The country’s booming AI sector has been abuzz with activities in recent times. Last week, the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) issued an advisory mandating social media platforms and other major companies, excluding startups and certain sectors, to seek prior approval before deploying AI models. It also directed platforms to label under-trial AI models and ensure that no unlawful content is hosted on their sites

While issues continue on the regulatory front, Indian institutes and startups continue to make headway in AI research. On Wednesday, IIT-Madras’ AI4Bharat unveiled IndicVoices – a comprehensive, open-source speech dataset spanning 22 Indian languages and 7,348 hours of audio.

In addition, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) also signed a multi-year pact with IISc, Bengaluru to conduct joint research in emerging areas such as blockchain and AI.