Nilekani-backed people+ai unveils Adbhut India, a vision for AI in India

people+ai, an initiative of Nandan Nilekani’s EkStep Foundation, on Tuesday unveiled its vision for the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in India, called “Adbhut India” (Amazing India). This ambitious vision envisions a future where AI serves as a powerful tool to improve the lives of all Indians.

The event marked the launch of people+ai’s various initiatives aimed at discovering, demonstrating and spreading population-scale AI use cases for India. Reflecting people+ai’s commitment to open and accessible solutions, the Open Cloud Compute (OCC) initiative was also launched on the same day. OCC aims to establish an open network for computing resources, meeting the growing demand for AI infrastructure while promoting healthy competition within the market.

Nilekani is the co-founder of Infosys and led the country’s massive unique identification project. He expanded on this vision in his keynote, predicting how AI will change the course of the industry.

“India’s approach to building technology at scale is unique. We have successfully unbundled the building blocks to create a population-scale digital public infrastructure for identity, payments and education,” said Nandan Nilekani at the launch of Adbhut India. “We see India’s ideas for technology being recognized globally. I believe that now is the time to bring AI together and make it work to empower every individual and identify AI use cases that are unique to India. AI will help break down barriers and personalize at scale,” Nilekani said.

Tanuj Bhojwani, head of people+ai, advocated a use case-driven approach to developing and deploying AI in India. He highlighted India’s unique strengths – a large digitally connected young population and a robust public digital infrastructure – as a springboard for impactful AI solutions.

Bhojwani said India needs AI more than any other country in the world. He highlighted the country’s diverse and vibrant population who use digital public infrastructures (DPIs) in their daily lives. In the future, India’s young population will use AI extensively for everything from entertainment to education. “We are already the largest consumers of mobile data in the world, and we will continue to be so in AI, making India the AI ​​use case capital of the world. This sets the stage for an Adbhut India powered by AI, where people and AI work together to drive progress, and people+ai aims to be the catalyst of an Adbhut India,” said Bhojwani.

Shankar Maruwada, co-founder and CEO of EkStep Foundation, said harnessing the positive power of AI to solve challenges unique to India’s diversity is an urgent opportunity for transformation that cannot and should not be lost. “India is uniquely positioned to make a meaningful difference by ensuring that the latest technology and innovation are accessible and equitable for all,” Maruwada said.

The event also included an exhibition of AI-powered community initiatives led by prominent figures including Nikhil Kumar (Setu), Jagadish Babu (EkStep Foundation), Charu Chadha (Rockefeller Foundation), Sunayana Sitaram (Microsoft Research) and Rahul Deora (Fynd) . . These initiatives highlighted the diverse applications of AI in addressing real-world problems.

Leaders from the AI-powered community have announced the following solutions that align with the vision of ‘Making an Adbhut India’.

Nikhil Kumar, co-founder of Setu, a leading Indian fintech company, unveiled Sesame – India’s first Large Language Model (LLM) designed specifically for the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) industries. This breakthrough, developed in collaboration with indigenous AI research firm Sarvam AI, marks a ‘ChatGPT moment’ in the financial services industry.

Rahul Deora, head of machine learning at Fynd, presented the launch of BharatDiffusion v2. BharatDiffusion is a diffusion-based AI model designed to create images that reflect the rich culture of India. It is trained on a large collection of Indian photos to produce high-quality, realistic photos that showcase the country’s diversity.

Sasank Chilamkurthy, founder of Von Neumann AI and former chief technology officer (CTO) of Qure.ai, presented his new product JOHNAIC, your personal AI server. This one-off ‘cloud in a box’ solution will reduce AI costs by 85 percent. It also comes with built-in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and AI tools to run small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and startups, democratizing access to AI. people+ai is the first customer of this product and is using it for their own AI requirements while keeping their data private.

Pratyush Kumar, co-founder of Sarvam.ai, a startup focused on foundational AI in India, showcased his platform that allows companies to build voice-enabled agentic AI systems in Indian languages.

Harsh Parikh, founder of DRiefcase, India’s largest personal health record app under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), spoke about the findings of a pilot survey conducted to demonstrate how they are using the Jan Ki Baat AI framework to collect qualitative feedback from patients at M. Kashiram Hospital, Kanpur. The study focused on the ABDM Scan and Share module and aims to reduce patient waiting times in hospitals. In the future, it could potentially transfer public feedback directly from hospitals to health ministries.

Harsh Mani Tripathi, co-founder of STAGE, showcased India’s first Haryanvi dialect-based AI voice agent on their OTT platform. This AI agent connects with users in Haryanvi and not only provides technical support but also forges an emotional bond. STAGE, an entertainment platform for India’s regional cultures, serving Haryanvi and Rajasthani cultures, recently became profitable with over 1.2 million paying subscribers. STAGE is leading a new era of customer engagement that validates, strengthens and celebrates regional identities while making culture preservation its core mission.

EkStep Foundation was founded by Nandan Nilekani, Rohini Nilekani and Shankar Maruwada. The foundation aims to champion ecosystems that build digital public goods, have large-scale impact for billions of people, and innovate across borders.

First print: May 07, 2024 | 8:44 PM IST