Latest news with #EkStepFoundation
Entrepreneur
a day 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 !
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Business Standard
2 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.
NDTV
05-05-2025
- Health
- NDTV
Play Isn't Just Fun, It's Science: Dr Zirak Marker
'We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.' - George Bernard Shaw Experts consider the first 3000 days of a child's life as the most crucial period. Highlighting this vital timeframe, initiatives like Bachpan Manao by NDTV and EkStep Foundation highlight that during this duration, the child develops an emotional quotient (EQ), Intellectual Quotient (IQ), and physical capabilities. In this technological age where devices hasten the process of essential development, it becomes crucial to emphasise traditional learning and playful patterns for the child. Engaging learning and active participation in physical, creative and cognitive exercises ensures a child's holistic development. Highlighting the significance of play, Dr Zirak Marker, a Child, Adolescent, and Family Psychiatrist, said that 90 percent of one's learning and neuronal development happens because of a concept called 'Neuroplasticity'. Dr Zirak Marker, Child, Adolescent and Family Psychiatrist, said, This phenomenon is completed approximately 90 per cent by the age of 5-6 years. He further said that learning isn't restricted to academics and linguistics; it develops through physical development, energy building, balance and motor skills. The child develops the 'pre-reading and pre-writing', which develop further into their education, their curiosity, and their motivation to learn, these are all driven by dopamine, the 'happy hormone' play releases. He added, Playing at an early onset leaves with so many beautiful learnings. With that being said and done, there sure are some elements that prove to be of utmost importance while engaging with kids between the ages of 0-8 years as parents (you might want to look out for these). According to Dr Marker, there's a certain set of essentials that are required to be taught to children in the 'Parenting Starter Kit'. For one, expert and parental advice pertains to agreeing on a common conclusion, it is imperative to teach the kids the importance of failing. They need to know it is not always about the win, Dr Marker stated, they need to learn from failure too. Secondly, it always comes in handy to be equipped with anger management skills. It helps the child with conflict resolution and team-building. Third, and the most important lesson we need to teach the kids as parents, as educators and as stakeholders in the child's life is to be kind, empathetic, gentle, creative and open not just towards each other, but also towards nature and all its elements. All of these, no matter how spoken about and no matter how repetitive, are essential for the child's physical and mental growth and health. In recent years, children, even 9-10-year-olds, are being diagnosed with chronic illnesses, diabetes, obesity, anxiety, depression, stress and much more. So, to avoid these extreme circumstances, let children be children, let play drive them. Thus, by consciously prioritising foundational experiences, minimising screen exposure and academic pressures, one can empower their children to develop resilience, empathy and a genuine eagerness for learning, ultimately fostering a generation that is not only academically capable but also emotionally adept and physically capable.
