Latest news with #GaneshRamakrishnan
India Gazette
7 days ago
- Automotive
- India Gazette
R&D has to be stepped up by industry and academia, say experts at the 'AI for India' summit in Bengaluru
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], June 28 (ANI): Research & Development (R&D) has to be stepped up by the industry and academia, which is a constant pain point, highlighted experts in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) during a fireside chat at the ongoing 'AI for India' event in Bengaluru. 'This is an opportunity. R&D must step up, and this effort needs to be implemented across the industry and in academia. I must empathise with the industry; there are pain points they face in adapting to changes, not just AI, but to pretty much anything disruptive. So we need industries to step up, but we also need academia to step up, and this is an opportunity,' said Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Professor at IIT Bombay. Speaking about the change in classroom learning at IIM Bangalore, Rishikesha Krishan, Director, said that they have already witnessed the industry asking students questions about how they will utilise AI in areas such as digital marketing, etc. He said, 'This year itself, in our placement interviews, we found companies asking prospective candidates. Questions like if you have to make a digital marketing plan for the company, how will you use AI tools to do it more effectively, what tool will you use, how will you go about it?, etc. - so that's what's happening on the employer side. So what we are trying to figure out right now.' Krishnan further added that the focus of academia is 'co-creation'. 'We want the human being and the AI to work together. We don't just want some output of that GenAI engine,' he added. During the event, in a separate discussion about areas where traction has been witnessed, Gourav Gupta of India 2W TVS Motors stated that the company's AI is being utilised in manufacturing efficiencies, equipment efficiencies, predictive maintenance, safety, and other areas. 'In terms of consumer-facing activities already at our end, we are working in the area of, uh, conversational AI. We're working already in the area of, uh. You're familiar with voice AI as well, so whenever our call centres are interacting with our consumers, the entire sentiment analysis and other aspects are being actively worked on. The third area is now leveraging marketing and tools. In fact, I'm more than happy to share with you a look at what our team has now leveraged and put across an entire AI-generated advertising campaign as well. Uh, you know, so in terms of making sure that, uh, and using GI content that is very specific to consumers, that's an area that can always evolve even to higher levels, and the third area is actually for employee engagement,' Gupta added. Sateesh Seetharamiah, of CEO EdgVerve, said, 'We are seeing close to a 40 to 50 per cent improvement in productivity.' 'AI for India' summit aims to create a platform for actionable collaboration among industry leaders, deep tech startups, academia, civic bodies, and policymakers, according to the official release by AI4India. AI4India is a public-interest initiative working to build India's AI ecosystem through open innovation, ethical research, and collaborative capacity building. Its DataDaan campaign and national engagements aim to make AI work for every Indian. The ongoing summit is witnessing a diversity of Industry Speakers from TVS Motors, HDFC Bank, Sahamati Foundation, Tejas Networks, EdgeVerve, Yotta, among others. While leading AI startups, Sarvam and BharatGen, will showcase their latest models, innovations from Latlong AI, Parlaxiom, Pienomial, and others will also be on display. (ANI)
Time of India
7 days ago
- Automotive
- Time of India
AI for India summit: Experts call for stronger R&D from academia and industry; AI adoption growing across sectors
Photo credit- ANI The need to scale up research and development (R&D) across Indian academia and industry was a recurring theme at the 'AI for India' summit in Bengaluru, where leading voices in artificial intelligence stressed the urgency of cross-sectoral collaboration to make AI work at scale in India. 'This is an opportunity. R&D must step up, and this effort needs to be implemented across the industry and in academia,' said Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Professor at IIT Bombay, during a fireside chat, according to ANI. He emphasised that while industries do face challenges in adapting to disruptive changes like AI, the responsibility to scale innovation lies with both industry and academic institutions. Rishikesha Krishnan, Director of IIM Bangalore, highlighted a shift already visible in placement processes. 'This year itself, in our placement interviews, we found companies asking prospective candidates: if you have to make a digital marketing plan for the company, how will you use AI tools to do it more effectively?' he said. He added that the institute is focusing on 'co-creation,' where 'the human being and the AI work together,' rather than simply relying on generative AI tools. In a separate panel, Gourav Gupta of TVS Motors shared that the company is deploying AI across a range of functions. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Veja as oitenta mulheres mais lindas do Brasil Gloriousa Undo 'Our AI is being utilised in manufacturing efficiencies, equipment efficiencies, predictive maintenance, safety, and other areas,' he said. Gupta noted that TVS is also actively working with conversational and voice AI tools for customer service, sentiment analysis, and marketing campaigns, including a fully AI-generated ad campaign, ANI reported. 'We're using GenAI content that is very specific to consumers,' he said, underlining the potential for hyper-personalisation. On internal operations, Gupta said TVS Motors is also applying AI to employee engagement, reflecting the company's broader digital transformation strategy. Sateesh Seetharamiah, CEO of EdgeVerve, said his company has seen productivity improvements of 'close to 40 to 50 per cent' using AI. The 'AI for India' summit, organised by AI4India, seeks to establish actionable collaboration between deep tech startups, large enterprises, academia, civic bodies, and government stakeholders. ANI reported that the initiative promotes ethical research, open innovation, and capacity-building, with campaigns like DataDaan designed to ensure AI reaches every Indian. According to ANI, the summit is also showcasing cutting-edge models and technologies from leading startups such as Sarvam, BharatGen, Latlong AI, Parlaxiom, and Pienomial. Industry speakers from HDFC Bank, Tejas Networks, Sahamati Foundation, and Yotta are also participating. The ongoing discussions reflect a broader push to position India as a global hub for ethical and inclusive AI development, with institutions and industry converging to develop solutions that are both technologically advanced and socially responsible. Stay informed with the latest business news, updates on bank holidays and public holidays . AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
Time of India
01-06-2025
- Science
- Time of India
AI datasets by IIT-Bombay to simplify Indian texts, help in AI research
AI datasets by IIT-Bombay to simplify Indian texts, help in AI research (ANI) MUMBAI: For years, research in Indian knowledge systems, often available in Indian languages such as Sanskrit, was challenging for researchers. However, a data curation exercise carried out by the premier IIT-Bombay, as part of its contribution to the central govt's AIKosh portal, has simplified it to some extent by digitising 30 different textbooks. A dataset containing around 2.18 lakh sentences with 1.5 million words from these textbooks, covering diverse topics such as astronomy, medicine, and mathematics, with some even as old as 18 centuries, is now available on the govt portal. AIKosh, launched in March, is a source for datasets, models, toolkits, and more from diverse sources that aim to help AI-based innovation and research. IIT-Bombay, one of the leading contributors to the AIKosh platform, along with BharatGen, a consortium of seven institutes again led by IIT-Bombay, has contributed 37 diverse models and datasets on the portal so far. IIT-Bombay alone launched around 16 culturally significant datasets on the platform to contribute to the country's AI mission. BharatGen, funded through a section 8 company formed by the Department of Science and Technology with IIT-Bombay, IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Madras, IIT-Hyderabad, IIT-Mandi, IIM-Indore, and IIIT-Hyderabad as partners, launched 21 models on the portal. 'We are not only researching Large Language Models (LLMs) and other generative models for AI that are effective and data and compute efficient, but also building sovereign models for India from the ground up. We are creating datasets for training these models and fine-tuning them for downstream tasks such as conversation and question-answering, while creating benchmarking datasets towards calibrating the performance of these models,' said Prof Ganesh Ramakrishnan from IIT-Bombay, who is spearheading the project. The team has not only put out datasets relevant to the Indian knowledge systems but also others that can help in audio-visual learning, such as tutorials capturing practical skills like waste-to-toy creation or organic farming. There is also one on Sanskrit translation for contemporary prose, a math word problems dataset in Hindi and English which will train the AI in mathematical reasoning, and culturally-grounded multi-lingual question-answering datasets, including questions and answers from historian Dharampal's books, among others. One of the datasets also enables the AI to answer questions about images using external knowledge, and another interesting one is on recognising text in videos with camera movements. Most of these models are trained from scratch, not just fine-tuned, said Prof Ramakrishnan. The models also uniquely balance Indian data alongside English data, ensuring relevance to our country, he said. 'We are creating benchmarks for the AI ecosystem in the country, but these can be pulled out by researchers, enterprisers, companies, or even academia and developed further,' he added.
Indian Express
01-06-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
Key step in democratising AI: IIT-B releases 16 datasets on AIKOSH
In an important milestone for India's Artificial Intelligence (AI) ecosystem, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay has released 16 diverse and culturally significant datasets on AIKOSH, India's official AI repository, making it among the biggest contributors to AIKOSH. This marks a crucial step in democratising AI by making high-quality, India-centric data openly accessible to researchers, startups and developers across the country. IIT Bombay made the announcement on X, saying that these datasets are designed to support innovation and research in AI and Machine Learning (ML), particularly in the Indian context. *IIT Bombay Releases 16 AI Datasets on AIKOSH: Enabling the Future of Responsible AI in India 🇮🇳* IIT Bombay is thrilled to announce the release of 16 diverse and culturally significant datasets on AIKOSH, the Government of India's official AI repository. These datasets are… — IIT Bombay (@iitbombay) May 30, 2025 AIKOSH, which was launched in March by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, is a national platform aimed at providing support for inclusive AI development across the country. The 16 datasets by IIT Bombay are part of a larger pool of 21 AI models now available on AIKOSH, which were created by BharatGen, a Section 8 company funded by the Department of Science and Technology for indigenous AI development in India. The company is a consortium of seven partners. Led by IIT Bombay, the consortium includes IIT Kanpur, IIT Mandi, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Madras, IIM Indore and IIIT Hyderabad. Prof Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Department of Computer Science Engineering, IIT Bombay, said, 'Our goal is not just to build AI models but to provide resources that startups and system integrators can leverage, creating a favourable and sovereign AI ecosystem for India.' The datasets released on AIKOSH include handwritten and printed Indian scripts, multilingual audio data and resources designed to interpret visual and spoken inputs from Indian environments. Among the notable contributions are a large-scale Sanskrit Optical Character Recognition (OCR) dataset consisting of over 218,000 sentences from historical texts to support the digitisation of ancient Indian knowledge. There is also a speech recognition dataset with more than 78 hours of Sanskrit audio. Additional resources include capabilities for detecting tables across documents in 14 Indian languages and a comprehensive Wiki on Indian Knowledge Systems, among others. Prof Ramakrishnan said, 'Equal emphasis on India data and its provenance allows these models to uniquely balance Indian data alongside English data, ensuring true relevance and understanding for our diverse nation, while also catering to its security. These models are built with Indian linguistic and cultural nuances at their core. By making these datasets available to all thorough AIKOSH, we are democratising AI in order to foster innovations across the country, eventually to build a self-reliant and inclusive AI ecosystem for India.'
Hindustan Times
01-06-2025
- Science
- Hindustan Times
IIT-Bombay leads push for India-centric AI
Mumbai: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay has released 16 new datasets on AIKosh, the central government's platform that provides a repository of datasets to enable artificial intelligence (AI) innovation. This is a major step in developing AI that understands India's linguistic and cultural landscape, professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan, from IIT Bombay. These datasets will support innovation and research in AI and machine learning (ML), especially in areas involving Indian languages, scripts, documents, media, and audiovisual content. The effort is part of BharatGen, a multilingual large language model (LLM) initiative led by IIT Bombay and funded by the Department of Science and Technology. So far, BharatGen has contributed 16 India centric datasets and launched 21 AI models on AIKosh. The initiative includes top institutions such as the International Institute of Information Technology in Hyderabad and the IITs of Kanpur, Mandi, Madras, Hyderabad, Indore. IIT Bombay's datasets are designed to build a solid foundation for developing Indian AI tools and applications. These include over 218,000 sentences for improving digitisation of Sanskrit texts, audio-visual data on practical skills like upcycling discarded materials into toys and organic farming, English-Sanskrit translations with 53,000 sentences for modern prose, over 78 hours of Sanskrit audio for speech recognition, multilingual question-answer sets in 11 Indian languages, including Hindi and English, math word problems in Hindi and English for AI reasoning, and table detection datasets in 14 Indian languages. The datasets include visual question answering models (a system capable of answering questions related to an image), datasets to improve translation accuracy and recognize text in videos, a comprehensive overview of Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS), cross-lingual video and text retrieval in seven Indian languages (allowing AI to retrieve relevant information when the document is written in a different language from the query), and handwritten and printed text detection datasets. These datasets and models are part of a broader effort by IIT Bombay and BharatGen to build sovereign AI models for India aligned with the India AI Mission, a central government initiative that aims to build an ecosystem that allows AI innovation by enhancing data quality and facilitating computer access. The team is not just fine-tuning existing models, but training new ones from scratch using Indian data. They are also building benchmarks to test these models for Indian use in conversation and education. A major highlight of this initiative is the launch of 'Param 1', a bilingual foundational language model with 2.9 billion parameters. It supports both English and Hindi and has been trained on 36% Indic language data—significantly more than international models like Meta's Llama, which had less than 0.01%. 'Pre-training (the initial stage of training a machine learning model on a large dataset) is an enormous undertaking and often a barrier for many. That's why we've taken on this challenge,' professor Ramakrishnan, lead of BharatGen. Developers can now fine-tune Param 1 to build Indic chatbots, copilots (virtual assistants for research), and knowledge systems. 'We hope our efforts toward creating a sovereign Generative AI ecosystem and milestones such as the release of such LLM model checkpoints, serves as a foundation for India-specific solutions,' said professor Ramakrishnan. Alongside Param 1, BharatGen has launched over 20 speech models across 19 Indian languages. These include speaker adaptive text-to-speech (TTS) systems that can mimic a speaker's voice in languages like Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and Bengali. Advanced speaker-conditioned TTS models and automatic speech recognition systems have also been developed to make voice-based applications more natural and inclusive. 'Our goal is not just to build AI models but to provide resources that startups and system integrators can leverage,' said professor Ramakrishnan.
