Latest news with #WadhwaniAI
Mint
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Best of the Week: From Primetime to Purpose
In the 2000s and early 2010s, before the internet took over our lives, television remained the dominant medium across Indian households. Nearly 48% of homes owned a TV, according to the 2011 census. From cities to villages, it was the nation's window to the world. Bollywood stars often turned to TV, usually game or reality shows, to connect with the masses. But one show stood apart: Aamir Khan's Satyameva Jayate. Unlike celebrity-led shows that revolved around prize money, this one tackled hard-hitting social issues like female infanticide, dowry, and honour killings, bringing experts and citizens together for frank, empathetic conversations. Khan used his stardom to start dialogue, not just draw eyeballs. His latest film, Sitaare Zameen Par, carries that same spirit. Dubbed a spiritual successor to Taare Zameen Par, it's an adaptation of the Spanish film Champions and features actors with developmental disorders like autism, Down syndrome, and Asperger's. The film opens space for honest conversation around disability. It avoids the 'Rain Man syndrome', a tendency to portray autistic characters as savants, and treats its characters with dignity, not pity. The syndrome is named after the 1988 film of the same name. Mental health is still not talked about enough in India, especially in adults and women. As Mint Lounge's Divya Naik reports, autism in women often goes undiagnosed because of long-standing gender biases. Art may exist to entertain, but the best of it also pushes us to reflect. In that regard, Sitaare Zameen Par succeeds. I'm no film critic, but I hope you take a moment to reflect on the issues it raises. Mental health affects children and adults alike. In rural India, ASHA workers are swapping weighing scales for smartphones. Using Shishu Mapan, an AI app that estimates a baby's weight from a short video, frontline workers can now spot early malnutrition signs without bulky tools or the internet. Built by Wadhwani AI, it's one of several new tools, like MAAP and Child Growth Monitor, helping track child growth more accurately in hard-to-reach areas. These offline-friendly innovations ease the load on health workers and improve data reliability. When integrated into public systems, they could transform child healthcare across India. India is charting an ambitious course to become a global shipbuilding powerhouse, unveiling plans to establish eight shipbuilding clusters along its vast coastline. Five will be greenfield projects in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, and Maharashtra, while three existing facilities, in Gujarat and Kerala, will be expanded. The initiative, part of the Maritime India Vision 2030 and 2047, aims to boost India's share of global shipbuilding from under 1% to 7% by 2030 and 69% by 2047. Blackstone, Kedaara, Advent, and Warburg Pincus are in talks to buy a 40–100% stake in Axis Finance, valuing it at $800 million–$1 billion. Axis Bank is selling to meet RBI rules that cap bank ownership in NBFCs at 20%. Earlier IPO and merger plans were dropped. Axis Finance had ₹ 36,962 crore in AUM as of December 2024, with 47% in retail loans. It posted ₹ 3,014 crore in revenue and ₹ 494 crore profit in nine months. UPI AutoPay is quietly reshaping the subscription economy in India. What began as a tool for easier bill payments has turned into a key growth lever for startups across edtech, wellness, fintech and entertainment. With Indians spending over 7 hours online daily, and mobile internet driving 58% of that time, recurring payments are becoming the norm, and AutoPay is making it seamless, even for ₹ 99-a-month services in tier-2 towns. But as millions sign up, concerns are emerging over tricky cancellations and auto-debits gone wrong. Can India's subscription surge stay user-friendly as it scales? From ghost hamlets turning livable to districts shedding decades-old social biases, Tamil Nadu's industrial strategy is quietly rewriting its rural future. Factories from the likes of Tata, Ola, and VinFast aren't just bringing jobs, they're bringing back peace, delaying child marriages, and flipping old preferences for a boy child. Behind this shift is a deliberate push by the state to take industries away from Chennai and into the hinterlands. But convincing investors hasn't been easy, as some deals were almost lost. And while this model has opened up new frontiers, it's also bumping up against old challenges. So, what's Tamil Nadu doing right, and what still holds it back? Is the index options craze finally forcing Sebi to tighten the screws? After several attempts to cool down the F&O frenzy, including higher lot sizes and stricter position limits, the regulator may now rethink the weekly expiry format altogether. A shift to fortnightly expiries and just one expiry per fortnight is being considered if volumes don't fall meaningfully soon. This comes amid fears of fallout from the Jane Street episode, which rocked capital market stocks. But is this just a speed bump or the start of a structural reset? Retail participation remains strong, will that be enough to keep the options momentum going? 'What's the price of a song if no one's paying?' That's the existential crisis hitting India's audio streaming world. Big players like Wynk and Resso have bowed out, while Spotify slashes per-stream payouts. Why? Because Indians still love free music. Out of 192 million streamers, just 12 million are actually paying! The ad-supported model? It's crumbling under poor monetisation and rising content costs. AI bots, cluttered indie scenes, and short-form content fads are adding fuel to the fire. But can this be a turning point? Could a unified push towards paid models save the tune? If we truly value music, maybe it's time we stop freeloading and start subscribing. What if the forecast you saw yesterday is no longer true today? That's the new reality, says IMD chief Mrutyunjay Mohapatra. Thanks to climate change, predicting India's weather is becoming a race against time, lead times have halved, and extreme, hyper-local weather is rewriting the rulebook. From freak heatwaves to flash floods, lightning storms to disappearing western disturbances, the chaos is real, and it's hurting lives, crops, and the economy. In just the first 9 months of 2024, extreme weather struck 93% of the time. Still, Mohapatra remains hopeful, citing a 40–50% rise in forecast accuracy. But the big question remains: in a warming world, how long before prediction becomes pure guesswork? Is India's tech bellwether losing steam? TCS kicked off the Q1 earnings season with a rare miss, marking its third straight quarter of declining revenue. Global jitters, cautious clients, and a cooling India business, especially the BSNL slowdown, hit hard. Revenue dropped to $7.42 billion, trailing analyst expectations, with local revenues plunging 31%. CEO Krithivasan flagged delays in project starts and decision-making. While net profit rose 5.3%, aided by tax perks, wage hike plans remain uncertain, hinting at margin management over employee morale. With GenAI creeping in and global demand cloudy, is this the new normal for India's IT giants, or a temporary tech timeout? And what does this mean for peers reporting next week? Is IndusInd Bank rebuilding, or firefighting? After a ₹ 1,959 crore derivatives fiasco and CEO exit, the bank has tapped headhunters to fill key mid-to-senior roles, including CFO and heads of risk, retail, and corporate lending. But here's the twist—many are joining for the paycheck, not passion. With a 30% hike in demand and uncertain retention, is this a quick fix or a long-term strategy? Interestingly, the bank is also quietly building a CEO-ready succession bench, hinting at deeper leadership gaps. Will this shake-up steady the ship or stir more churn? And with RBI keeping a watch, will IndusInd's next chapter be one of redemption or repeat risks? That's all for this week, I hope you have a pleasant weekend! If you have feedback, want to talk about food, or have anything else to say about our journalism, write to me at or reply to this mail. You can also write to feedback@ Subscriber Experience Team
Mint
06-07-2025
- Health
- Mint
AI's children: How technology is ensuring India's infants are in the pink of health
Bengaluru: Every morning, Jyotsna Patel sets out in Kachigam, a quiet coastal village in Daman, with her mobile phone, a wooden ruler and a cloth sheet. For 13 years she's worked as an ASHA worker, India's all-purpose rural health army, crossing dusty lanes to check on new mothers, track malaria outbreaks or ferry babies for vaccinations. These days, her routine includes something newer and stranger: recording videos of newborn babies. 'Earlier we had to carry weighing scales and tapes, which was difficult. Now, we just carry the phone and it shows us the baby's weight. Even in small villages, we can do proper measurement easily," she says. Patel is referring to Shishu Mapan, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool trained on over 30,000 infants, built by scientists at the Wadhwani Institute for AI, a non-profit that develops AI-based solutions for social impact. Using a short, arc-shaped video while the newborn is undressed and laid on a cloth sheet, the app estimates the infant's weight and growth metrics, which eliminates the need for scales or guesswork. Initially sceptical, workers and mothers gained trust once the app showed accurate readings. 'When we first told mothers we would measure the child using a mobile phone, they thought we were joking. But when they saw the video and the weight appeared on the app, they were happy. Now they lay the sheet down themselves and want to see if their baby has gained weight," says Patel. While most babies are weighed at birth, follow-up checks during the critical first six weeks are patchy, especially in rural and underserved areas. In this context, AI-powered tools like Wadhwani AI's app could become frontline essentials, capable of transforming child health outcomes where the system often falls short. It also eases the burden on frontline health workers, who often struggle to keep up with high demand in rural areas. Low birth weight, defined as babies weighing less than 2.5kg at birth, is one of the most serious red flags in early childhood health. These infants face a higher risk of stunting, frequent infections and life-threatening malnutrition. Conditions such as marasmus, marked by extreme wasting due to calorie deficiency, or Kwashiorkor, caused by protein deficiency and resulting in swelling, liver damage and immune suppression, are tragically common when detection is delayed. Accurate growth monitoring in the first six weeks is often the only chance to intervene before it's too late. 'ASHA workers are overworked, their tools are outdated and there's no digital record-keeping," says Alpan Raval, chief scientist at Wadhwani institute of AI. AI-powered solutions offer a way forward, providing accurate and offline-friendly tools that ease the burden on frontline workers and bring consistency to child health assessments. Shishu Mapan began in 2019, when the Gates Foundation approached the institute with a challenge to develop a solution to accurately weigh low-birth-weight babies in rural India. After years of research and field testing, the pilot finally launched in Daman and Diu last year. Across India, a new crop of AI-based tools is being deployed to address persistent challenges in tracking early childhood development, particularly in low-resource settings. MAAP (Malnutrition Assessment and Action Plan) by social enterprise RevolutionAIze uses smartphone photos to estimate height and flag malnutrition risks. Researchers at IIIT-Hyderabad are testing a dual-photo method to estimate both height and weight using basic visual cues. The Child Growth Monitor, developed by Welthungerhilfe with Microsoft, uses infrared 3D sensors to scan young children for anthropometric (measurement of the human body) analysis. Each of these projects is different in scope, age range and technical complexity, but they share a common approach of rethinking child health infrastructure through accessible AI that can be applied on a large scale in densely populated areas. Digital fix for a systemic gap Neonatal healthcare in rural India faces challenges of access, affordability and awareness. Wadhwani's tool tackles this gap through early intervention. Once a baby is discharged from a hospital, the parents only return for immunizations after six weeks, leaving underweight newborns exposed to health risks. To address this blind spot, India's Home-Based Newborn Care (HBNC) programme requires ASHA workers to conduct home visits during this period. ASHA workers often help identify underweight babies and also connect new mothers with government nutrition programmes. These programmes are essential to prevent low birth weight spiralling into chronic undernutrition. But when weight data is missing or inaccurate, these safety nets often miss the most vulnerable. The tools available to ASHAs, such as sling-based Salter spring balances, are not suited for this use case. 'The needle flickers and ASHA workers struggle to get a stable reading," explains Dr. Sneha Nikam, a public health expert at Wadhwani AI. 'That makes it hard to detect issues early or take timely action." The Shishu Mapan app is a simple solution where an ASHA worker places the baby next to a wooden ruler, records a short video and lets the phone do the rest. The app maps the baby's key points and calculates weight, length and head circumference. The model, optimized to run on low-end Android phones and tolerate imperfect lighting or motion, works in offline mode without needing the internet or cloud storage, making it effective in rural areas with poor connectivity. Raval says the initial development of the project began in hospitals where controlled lighting and backgrounds allowed the team to prove that the core idea of estimating weight from video was viable. Field deployment, however, required tweaks. For instance, instead of a checkerboard for visual calibration, Wadhwani used a wooden ruler that ASHA workers already carried. Some parents raised privacy concerns during tests, which the team eventually handled by storing videos locally and deleting them after processing. 'We tried building a model that could work on blurred faces, but it didn't work. The AI would overestimate size," he admits. The team eventually found a compromise where videos are stored locally and deleted immediately after processing. Only internal annotators, bound by NDAs and working in secure rooms, see the raw footage. In early 2024, the app was piloted in Daman and Diu. Local health authorities integrated it into their PHMP (Proactive health management plan) platform, replacing manual weight entries. The app's margin of error, around 114 grams, is significantly lower than spring balances, which can vary by 183 grams. To account for possible over or underestimation, ASHA workers are instructed to refer babies even if their readings are slightly above or below thresholds. 'If the AI says 1.9 kg, we still refer it to local hospitals, because it could actually be a 1.8 kg baby," says Nikam. Although it is too early to assess the long-term impact on health outcomes, initial feedback suggests a shift in how early growth monitoring is being approached. According to Nikam, having digital logs adds to the accountability of ASHA workers and also provides a clearer picture. The rise in timely referrals is helping trigger earlier interventions in areas such as nutrition and sanitation. Expanding AI tools' ecosystem While Wadhwani's tool focuses on the newborn stage, MAAP picks up where it leaves off—monitoring children from six months onward. Developed by social entrepreneur Romita Ghosh and data scientist Nilashis Roy under their social enterprise RevolutionAIze, MAAP uses a single smartphone photo to estimate height, assess nutritional status and suggest tailored meal plans. 'Over 3.5 million severely malnourished children in India go unscreened," says Ghosh. 'MAAP helps health workers catch early signs even in the remotest corners." Built for similar working conditions in rural India, MAAP's tool also works offline and is prop-free. The team experimented with rulers, checkerboards and even Bisleri bottles for calibration before teaching the AI to estimate scale from posture and surroundings. Early challenges like poor lighting and photo angles led to a field-tested MAAP Manual and vernacular training videos. Ghosh says co-designing with ASHA and Anganwadi workers was essential. 'We didn't just build it for them. We built it with them," she says. MAAP is free for government staff, while private providers pay. This cross-subsidy helps keep the product sustainable. The data collected through the tool is anonymized and doesn't store any faces. The algorithm, on the other hand, is constantly updated to reflect regional diversity in body proportions and skin tones. Ghosh says the model has earned global attention with invitations to present at the WHO and the AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva. In Telangana, IIIT-Hyderabad researchers are testing a dual-photo app that estimates height and weight using markers such as wall charts and scale displays. Still in the pilot phase, it shows potential for institutional settings but requires tighter protocols. Meanwhile, the Child Growth Monitor developed by Welthungerhilfe and Microsoft uses 3D infrared cameras to create full-body scans of children under five. The model is accurate and hardware-driven, but its high cost and dependency on sensors limit its field adaptability. The road ahead Wadhwani AI's next step is to expand its anthropometry model to cover children up to six years old. Prasaanth Balraj, product manager at the institute, who also oversees its work on tuberculosis and maternal health, told Mint that the ministry of women and child development has requested this expansion to integrate the tool with the Poshan Tracker, India's national child nutrition data platform. 'This will require retraining the model to accurately assess older children, whose movement patterns and body proportions differ significantly from newborns," says Balraj. Wadhwani AI is also preparing to roll out pilots in other states, with Arunachal Pradesh among the first. The team has begun the process of contextualizing the model for regional variations in lighting, skin tone and infant appearance. Field teams are supporting this with training, technical setup and feedback loops. 'In many testing sites, this is the first time we're seeing such data on infant growth being captured and shared upward in near real time," says Balraj. For Romita Ghosh, whose work through MAAP focuses on the broader challenge of identifying malnourished children, the long-term impact depends on integrating AI into existing public systems rather than creating parallel ones. 'You don't move mountains with tech alone. You do it with policy, partnerships and patience," she says. MAAP flags early malnutrition risks and suggests meal plans tailored to local diets. By embedding the tool into existing government workflows and offering it free to public health workers while subsidizing costs through private partners, Ghosh says they're aiming to 'move the needle" on India's malnutrition crisis. Whether it's MAAP's pose-estimation model, IIIT-Hyderabad's dual-photo tool or Wadhwani's newborn weight app, the tools will have a larger impact when they integrate into the system. Hence they are being designed to work offline, on basic phones and inside routines that frontline workers already follow. Scaling AI for healthcare Sumedha Sircar, a public health researcher with a public health degree from Harvard and founder of Liger India, has worked extensively on deploying AI for cervical cancer screening in rural Bihar and Jharkhand. 'Anthropometry is simpler. It should be possible to build reliable AI around it, especially one that gives standardized, repeatable results in rural settings," she says. Beyond accuracy, Sircar emphasizes the potential for AI to improve data reliability. 'ASHA workers are overburdened and often have to meet targets. A smartphone tool that requires visual inputs makes data harder to fudge than paper entries," she says. Sircar suggests expanding the ASHA workforce and using AI to embed local training and feedback loops, so workers can report issues or share successes without waiting for top-down interventions. Shally Awasthi, head of the paediatrics department at King George's Medical university and a member of the World Health Organization's advisory group, says AI-based interventions have huge potential in detection of malnutrition and undernutrition in areas with limited access to trained paediatricians. They also have a role to play in areas manned by healthcare professionals who are either too busy to focus on anthropometry and its interpretation and follow up, or have not been trained in paediatrics, she says. 'AI intervention for detection must be supported by facilities for action and follow-up at a clinic close to their home," says Awasthi. 'The follow ups cannot be done effectively by AI as a lot of personal coaching and handholding will be needed for a long time." In other words, AI is not a silver bullet. But it can have a hugely positive impact on millions of lives if it is complemented by changes in practice and policy.
Fox News
03-07-2025
- Business
- Fox News
Artificial intelligence fuels Big Tech partnerships with nuclear energy producers
There has been little change in U.S. energy consumption over the past decade. Increased efforts to make energy use more efficient have kept levels low. But over the next five years, demand for electricity to power data centers is expected to more than double. Some estimates show the facilities are expected to require as much energy in 2030 as the entire country of Japan does today. "Every investor is lining up to invest in the next AI breakthrough. But when it comes to energy, there is a challenge in terms of permitting, the reality of construction timelines for new power plants and new grid capabilities," said senior advisor with the Wadhwani A.I. center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "All of this could slow down A.I. just as the research and development is preparing for takeoff." The demand from tech firms comes amid skepticism from consumers. According to a Fox News Poll on how voters felt about A.I. in society, 43% saw it as a good thing, while 47% thought it was a bad thing. "I think it's natural that people will always have, call it a mixture of hopes and anxieties about what a new technology, including any new technology and especially AI may bring," Microsoft President Brad Smith said. "The truth is we all rely on AI already, even if we don't think about it." While positive views have increased faster than negative views, according to polling from 2023, subgroups surveyed expressed opinions all over the board. Most rural voters, White voters, women and those over the age of 45 viewed A.I. as a bad thing. Urban voters, non-White voters, men and those younger than 45 viewed the technology as good. Among major political parties, registered Republicans were most optimistic about A.I. but no party's approval was above 50%. Despite the somewhat negative sentiment of most voters, tech companies are powering on. "A.I. relies on a lot of what we call compute. A lot of chips that do a lot of calculations and a lot of data that is accessed and is stored. So all of that requires more electricity. And it's why we have to pursue new partnerships as we are with the kinds of companies that generate electricity," Smith said. At least two nuclear plants are scheduled to restart thanks to big tech partnerships. "I think this will all become an increasing part of the nation's electricity future," Smith said. "It only makes sense for a power company to invest, to bring something like Three Mile Island back online if it has a guarantee that somebody's gonna purchase it. And so in this case, Microsoft entered into a long-term advanced purchase agreement with Constellation." Three Mile Island is located near Pennsylvania's capital, Harrisburg. The site is most widely known for its Unit 2 reactor's partial meltdown in 1979. It was one of the most serious nuclear accidents in U.S. history. The reactor was immediately taken offline in the aftermath. "Very small traces of radioactivity have been released from the plant," said Metropolitan Edison Vice President John "Jack" Herbein at the time. While there were no detectable health effects, the incident changed how nuclear plants operate. Three Mile Island Unite 1 closed in 2019 for economic reasons. Constellation and Microsoft plan to restart the reactor as early as 2027 at what is now called Crane Energy Center. It will add more than 800 megawatts of energy. That's enough to power more than 800,000 homes. Nuclear power has the highest energy efficiency rate, yet energy producers say the U.S. should remain diversified. "I think it's going to be an important part of the mix," Constellation President and CEO Joseph Dominguez said. "We don't need 24/7 power for the full amount of electricity in the U.S. We still have seasonal needs, we still have day and night differences." Microsoft is working to add the amount of power back to the grid that the company's data centers will use from the regional transmission system. "Our philosophy as a company is that we will invest to bring onto the electric grid as much or more power than we will consume," Smith said. "We will do that in a way that ensures that none of the neighbors are going to see rise in their electricity rates." Constellation is also partnering with Meta to relicense its Clinton Clean Energy Center in central Illinois for another 20 years. "It's a combination of existing megawatts plus new megawatts that are being developed pursuant to the great agreements we have with the hyperscalers," Dominguez said. Meta plans to add up to four gigawatts of nuclear generation across the U.S. starting in the early 2030s. Amazon will build two data center complexes in Pennsylvania and use nearly two gigawatts of electricity from Talen Energy's nuclear plant. Google is partnering with Elementl Power on three nuclear projects, each expected to produce 600 megawatts. "This is all nuclear. It's a hot industry. It's a brilliant industry," President Donald Trump said as he signed several executive orders in May. Those are intended to quadruple domestic nuclear power production within the next 25 years. "To win the AI race, we're going to need a lot of energy," White House A.I. and Crypto Czar David Sacks said. "The new AI data centers are very power hungry. They consume a lot of electricity. And the U.S. electric grid really hasn't grown very much over the past decade." Sacks founded venture capital firm Craft Ventures. Now he is helping steer President Trump's A.I. agenda. "We have to have the most infrastructure. We need to have the most data centers. We need the most computing power, and that means more energy," Sacks said. "China has doubled the size of its electric grid over the past decade. We haven't and so we need to drill baby drill and build baby build."
Mint
02-07-2025
- Business
- Mint
India plans AI-driven pest detection roll-out to help farmers, say agriculture secy
New Delhi: India plans a nationwide roll-out of its artificial intelligence (AI)-driven pest detection scheme to help farmers, agriculture and farmers welfare secretary Devesh Chaturvedi told Mint. The National Pest Surveillance System (NPSS), launched on 15 August, 2024, has seen a limited roll out for around 30,000 users so far, including farmers and extension workers. But it will ultimately be made available for around 146 million farmers. The scheme uses images of pests to help farmers mitigate pest attacks and reduce crop losses. The development assumes significance given that average crop losses are estimated at 10-35% annually due to weeds, pests and disease. Losses due to pest and diseases are not static and vary from year to year depending on temperature, humidity, rainfall, susceptibility of the crop variety and agronomic practices. Chaturvedi said NPSS currently covers pests and diseases in 61 crops and will be expanded. "We plan to bring more farmers and extension workers under its ambit taking it to 50,000 users initially. Further, the idea is to extend it to all farmers," added Chaturvedi. The agriculture ministry plans to take the technology to the farmers so that they can communicate with experts directly by uploading images of affected crops or pests. Agriculture contributes around 18% to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 46% of the country's population is engaged in it. Any disturbance in the sector pertaining to productivity not only acts as a stumbling block in taming inflation but also affects the farmer' livelihood. "AI's computer vision model has the capability to identify and differentiate between farmer-friendly insects and pests. The latter are harmful to crop growth which eventually adversely affects farmers income. Once the pest is detected, these models can be clubbed with pest management advisories, which can reduce indiscriminate use of pesticides, and can help in overall sustainability of environment and enhanced incomes of the farmer, said J.P. Tripathi, Director of Agriculture Programmes at Wadhwani AI. Established in 2018, Wadhwani AI, is a non profit organisation that focuses on AI applications. For the year 2025-26, the government has set a record food grain production target of 354.64 million tonnes (MT), up 3.8% from 341.55 MT in 2024-25. The government is banking on a good monsoon, predicted to be above normal at 106% of the long period average. The government is also using AI in other applications to empower farmers. It has created the Kisan e-Mitra chatbot, a voice-based AI-powered chatbot, developed to assist farmers with responses to their queries on PM Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme. Started with five languages in September 2023, the solution now supports 11 regional languages and is also evolving to assist with other government programmes. The system accepts audio and text queries in the farmer's desired language, translate them, and provide responses in the local language in both text and audio formats. "Since its inception, over 9.3 million queries have been answered," added Chaturvedi. The chatbot operates on a self-learning AI model. The AI chatbot can respond to inquiries about the progress of their applications, payment information, ineligibility status, and any updates or modifications made to the programme.
