The cabinet led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved the initiation of a comprehensive national-level initiative called IndiaAI mission, signaling a significant step towards revolutionizing the artificial intelligence landscape of the nation. With an impressive budget allocation of Rs 10,371.92 crore over the forthcoming five years, this mission holds the promise of reshaping the AI ecosystem of the country.
According to Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, the IndiaAI mission is designed to establish a comprehensive ecosystem that fosters AI innovation through strategic collaborations and programs across both public and private sectors. The overarching goal of this mission is to promote responsible and inclusive growth within the AI landscape by democratizing access to computing resources, improving the quality of data, nurturing indigenous AI capabilities, attracting top talent in AI, facilitating industry partnerships, providing capital for AI startups, ensuring socially impactful AI projects, and reinforcing ethical AI practices.
The IndiaAI mission comprises several key components aimed at achieving its objectives. Firstly, it includes the establishment of a high-end scalable AI computing ecosystem under the Compute Capacity pillar. This initiative will deploy over 10,000 graphics processing units (GPU) through a public-private partnership model and develop an AI marketplace to offer services and pre-trained models to innovators. Additionally, an Innovation Centre will be tasked with developing and deploying indigenous large multimodal models (LMM) and domain-specific foundational models in critical sectors.
Furthermore, the mission will focus on enhancing access to quality non-personal datasets for AI innovation through the Datasets Platform, promoting AI applications in critical sectors through the Application Development Initiative, and expanding AI education accessibility through undergraduate, postgraduate, and PhD programs under the FutureSkills pillar. Additionally, the mission will support and accelerate deep-tech AI startups through streamlined access to funding under the Startup Financing component and ensure the development, deployment, and adoption of safe and trusted AI through the implementation of frameworks and guidelines.
Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, expressed gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for approving the substantial budget allocation for the mission. He emphasized the transformative potential of AI, highlighting it as the “kinetic enabler” for India’s digital economy. Minister Goyal reiterated the government’s commitment to promoting competition-based selection processes to ensure equal opportunity for research institutes and startups, aiming to democratize the spread of AI for broader stakeholder benefit.
Industry experts have lauded the initiative, recognizing its potential to accelerate AI innovation and foster collaboration within the AI domain. They believe that this mission could have a significant impact on the share market and influence sectors related to AI and technology. Moreover, the substantial financial support allocated for the mission is expected to propel both hardware manufacturing and AI use cases, positioning India as a global hub for AI innovation and contributing to the country’s vision for Electronic System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM).
