Latest news with #AI4Bharat
Entrepreneur
2 days ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Nandan Nilekani Increases Support to AI4Bharat with Total Grant of INR 70 Crore
In a statement, Nilekani said AI4Bharat is creating essential language infrastructure that enables Indian citizens to access digital services in their native languages You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. Infosys Co-founder and Chairman Nandan Nilekani has committed an additional multi-year grant to AI4Bharat, a public-focused artificial intelligence (AI) initiative at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, bringing his total funding to INR 70 crore. The announcement was made by the EkStep Foundation, which supports digital infrastructure and learning initiatives. AI4Bharat works on building foundational AI models aimed at improving accessibility to digital services in India's 22 scheduled languages. The initiative has focused on developing speech and translation datasets, including the collection of 15,000 hours of transcribed speech from over 400 districts and the creation of a bilingual corpus comprising 2.2 million translation pairs. These are curated by a team of more than 100 language experts. The latest funding comes directly from Nilekani and follows his earlier contribution in 2022, which led to the establishment of the Nilekani Centre at AI4Bharat. The initiative's models have been released as open-source public goods and are hosted on AI4Bharat's platform and AIKosh, India's open AI repository. In a statement, Nilekani said AI4Bharat is creating essential language infrastructure that enables Indian citizens to access digital services in their native languages. He also remarked on India's potential to emerge as a global leader in AI applications by leveraging its existing digital public infrastructure. Since the global release of ChatGPT in 2022, AI4Bharat's language models have seen increased adoption across sectors. These models are now integrated into tools for regional language chatbots, as well as education and governance platforms. AI4Bharat's work forms the language layer of India's AI stack and is used in Bhashini, the national language translation initiative under the IndiaAI Mission. Bhashini supports multilingual digital access in public service areas such as healthcare, finance, and governance, utilising AI4Bharat's open models in speech recognition, machine translation, and text-to-speech technologies. The project continues to operate within an open-source framework, contributing data and tools intended for public use in India's evolving AI ecosystem.
Time of India
2 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Nilekani commits second multi-year grant to AI4Bharat
Bengaluru: Infosys cofounder and chairman Nandan Nilekani committed a second multi-year grant to AI4Bharat—an open-source initiative at IIT Madras that is building foundational AI models for Indian languages. Its work spans speech recognition, machine translation, text-to-speech, and language understanding for all major Indian languages. In 2020, Nilekani saw the transformative potential of AI in Indian languages. Nilekani-founded EkStep Foundation and AI4Bharat began investing in language digitisation, data infrastructure, and early models tailored to Indian linguistic diversity. Applications were built within weeks of ChatGPT's release, ranging from chatbots in regional languages to integrations in governance and education. AI4Bharat's models became the underlying infrastructure for this deployment. AI4Bharat has become the language backbone of India's AI stack. Its open-source speech, translation, and text-to-speech models now power key public digital platforms. Bhashini, India's national language platformunder the IndiaAI Mission, has adopted AI4Bharat's models to scale multilingual services across governance, healthcare, and finance. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Giao dịch CFD với công nghệ và tốc độ tốt hơn IC Markets Đăng ký Undo The Supreme Court's SUVAS system translates judgments into regional languages. Agricultural chatbots like Kisan e-Mitra use these models to deliver real-time information to farmers. AI4Bharat's language datasets—meticulously collected in all 22 constitutionally recognised Indian languages—have been released as public goods, openly available for use through the AI4Bharat website and integrated into AIKosh, India's open AI repository. "Inclusion begins with access—and for Bharat, that means language," said Nilekani. "AI4Bharat is building the infrastructure that ensures every AI divide, the vision of 'AI for All' is extremely relevant for our country. Indians can access digital services in the language they speak." Prof V Kamakoti, director of IIT Madras, said, "With the growing need for Bharat-specific AI models and also reducing the possibility of a potential. The 2022 grant established the Nilekani Centre at AI4Bharat, supported by EkStep Foundation. Over three years, this effort demonstrated how to build population-scale, high-quality, and open-source language infrastructure through community participation and scientific rigour. "I strongly believe that India can be the use case capital of AI in the world," said Nilekani. "With our DPI foundation, we can build better AI, and in turn, AI can turbocharge DPI. Our belief is that AI should be inclusive, not extractive. It should amplify every human being's potential. That's our vision of AI for the people—AI to make lives better, AI to amplify human potential. People plus AI is how we hope to leverage AI and actually make it work for people at scale." Get the latest lifestyle updates on Times of India, along with Eid wishes , messages , and quotes !
Time of India
3 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani commits second multi-year grant to AI4Bharat; total Rs 70 crore
Building on the success of his first grant, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani has committed a second multi-year grant to AI4Bharat—an open-source initiative at IIT Madras that is building foundational AI models for Indian languages -- taking the total funding to Rs 70 crore. AI4Bharat aims to gather 15,000 hours of transcribed data from over 400 districts encompassing all 22 scheduled languages of India. In parallel, its in-house team of over 100 translators is creating a parallel corpus with 2.2 million translation pairs across 22 languages. "This grant, issued directly by Nandan Nilekani, reflects his belief that AI4Bharat is one of the most impactful technology infrastructure projects in India. Their work will play a vital role in making India the AI use case capital of the world," a statement from EkStep Foundation , founded by Nilekani, said. 'AI4Bharat is building the infrastructure that ensures every Indian can access digital services in the language they speak. I strongly believe that India can be the use case capital of AI in the world. With our DPI foundation, we can build better AI, and in turn, AI can turbocharge DPI. Our belief is that AI should be inclusive, not extractive. It should amplify every human being's potential. That's our vision of AI for the people—AI to make lives better, AI to amplify human potential,' Nilekani said in the statement. EkStep did not respond to queries from ET on how much the second grant alone is and its duration. Also, details of the quantum of the first grant is not known. In 2020, EkStep and AI4Bharat began investing in language digitisation, data infrastructure, and early models tailored to Indian linguistic diversity. "Applications were built within weeks of ChatGPT's release in 2022, ranging from chatbots in regional languages to integrations in governance and education. AI4Bharat's models became the underlying infrastructure for this rapid deployment," the statement said. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories AI4Bharat has become the language backbone of India's AI stack, EkStep said. Its open-source speech, translation, and text-to-speech models now power key public digital platforms. Bhashini, India's national language platform under the IndiaAI Mission, has adopted AI4Bharat's models to scale multilingual services across governance, healthcare, and finance. The Supreme Court's SUVAS system translates judgments into regional languages. National Payments Corporation of India has enabled voice-based Unified Payments Interface transactions in native tongues. Agricultural chatbots like Kisan e-Mitra use these models to deliver real-time information to farmers. AI4Bharat's language datasets—collected in all 22 constitutionally recognised Indian languages—have been released as public goods, openly available for use through the AI4Bharat website and integrated into AIKosh, India's open AI repository. Bengaluru-based Sarvam AI is the first startup to be selected to build an indigenous foundation model under the Rs 10,000 crore IndiaAI Mission, the government had announced. "We are collaborating with AI4Bharat, in Indian language AI research, to build these models," Sarvam cofounder Pratyush Kumar had said. 'With the growing need for Bharat-specific AI models, and also reducing the possibility of a potential AI divide, the vision of 'AI for All' is extremely relevant for our country,' said Prof V Kamakoti, director of IIT Madras, in the statement. The first grant given in 2022 established the Nilekani Centre at AI4Bharat, supported by EkStep Foundation.
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Business Standard
3 days ago
- Business
- Business Standard
Nandan Nilekani commits second multi-year grant to AI4Bharat at IIT Madras
Nandan Nilekani, Co-founder and Chairman, Infosys, has committed a second multi-year grant to AI4Bharat—an open-source initiative at IIT Madras that is building foundational AI models for Indian languages. Nilekani-founded EkStep Foundation and AI4Bharat began investing in language digitisation, data infrastructure and early models tailored to Indian linguistic diversity. AI4Bharat has become the language backbone of India's AI stack. Its open-source speech, translation and text-to-speech models now power key public digital platforms. Bhashini, India's national language platform under the IndiaAI Mission, has adopted AI4Bharat's models to scale multilingual services across governance, healthcare and finance. 'Inclusion begins with access—and for Bharat, that means language,' said Nilekani. 'AI4Bharat is building the infrastructure that ensures every Indian can access digital services in the language they speak,' he added. The Supreme Court's SUVAS system translates judgments into regional languages. NPCI has enabled voice-based UPI transactions in native tongues. Agricultural chatbots like Kisan e-Mitra use these models to deliver real-time information to farmers. AI4Bharat's language datasets—meticulously collected in all 22 constitutionally recognised Indian languages—have been released as public goods, openly available for use through the AI4Bharat website and integrated into AIKosh, India's open AI repository. Prof V Kamakoti, Director of IIT Madras, added: 'With the growing need for Bharat-specific AI models and also reducing the possibility of a potential AI divide, the vision of 'AI for All' is extremely relevant for our country. I sincerely hope that AI4Bharat, with the generous support of Mr Nandan Nilekani, will help in meeting these objectives.' The 2022 grant established the Nilekani Centre at AI4Bharat, supported by EkStep Foundation. Over three years, this effort has demonstrated how to build population-scale, high-quality and open-source language infrastructure through community participation and scientific rigour.
Time of India
26-04-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Sarvam AI selected to build indigenous foundational model under IndiaAI Mission
The government on Saturday announced that Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup Sarvam AI is the first startup selected to build an indigenous foundational model under the IndiaAI Mission . ET was the first to report on April 24 that Sarvam was one of the players selected for incentives under the Rs 10,000 crore mission. Sarvam will receive access to graphics processing units (GPUs) from the IndiaAI Mission's common compute cluster to train the model. The model will be completed in six months, said cofounder Vivek Raghavan at the event where the announcement was made. 'This model will have 70 billion parameters and many innovations in programming as well as engineering, with which a 70 billion parameter (model) can compete with some of the best in the world,' said union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, explaining the reasons for selecting Sarvam. The government has received over 400 applications to build Indian models. Capable of reasoning, designed for voice, and fluent in Indian languages, Sarvam's model will be ready for secure, population-scale deployment, the startup said in a statement. As part of the sovereign large language model proposal, Sarvam is developing three model variants, said Pratyush Kumar, cofounder, Sarvam. These include Sarvam-Large for advanced reasoning and generation, Sarvam-Small for real-time interactive applications, and Sarvam-Edge for compact on-device tasks. 'We are collaborating with AI4Bharat at IIT Madras , a leader in Indian language AI research, to build these models,' said Kumar. Both Raghavan and Kumar were earlier part of AI4Bharat before branching out to set up the startup. The multi-modal, multi-scale Indian foundation models will open up a 'universe of applications' for citizens and enterprises, said Raghavan.
