By Mohammed Shahid Kolhar 22 Oct’23 | 3 min read
Generative AI is undoubtedly the most transformative technology of our time. Its ability to create virtually any type of content on demand has opened up possibilities we never imagined. India finds itself at an inflection point in this global AI race. With the right strategies and investments over the next decade, India can emerge as a leading player spearheading impactful innovation in generative AI.
The Winds of Change are Blowing
In 2023, India’s generative AI outlook already looks markedly different from even 2 years ago. Venture capital funding into Indian AI startups touched $643 million in 2022. That’s a 300% jump over 2021. The National AI Strategy unveiled in 2022 earmarks ₹7,500 crore for AI research projects over the next 5 years. Multiple multi-billion dollar partnerships between Indian conglomerates and global AI labs are now catalyzing cutting-edge R&D.
India’s top educational institutes have prioritized advanced AI courses, fellowships, and incubation labs. Global players like Google, Microsoft, IBM, and AWS are expanding India-focused AI research and cloud infrastructure. Just the OpenAI-Microsoft supercomputer project in India will take India’s AI computing capacity to over 200 petaflops by 2025. India’s leading IT firms are also ramping up investments in building internal AI talent.
With this momentum already underway, India in the next 5-10 years will see an explosion of generative AI research, applications, and startups poised to take the world by storm.
Nurturing Moonshot Research and Innovation
The government intends to fund several ambitious national labs and university research centers focused on pushing the frontiers of generative AI across modalities. They will receive wide access to high-performance cloud infrastructure and multimodal Indian language and cultural datasets. These national hubs will aim to deliver breakthroughs in areas like:
- Lifelike virtual avatars that can see, speak, hear, and converse naturally in Indian languages.
- Physical robotics breakthroughs combine computer vision, natural language, and motor control.
- Next-generation foundation models like GPT-4 are tailored to Indian contexts across multiple Indian languages.
- Creative AI to generate music, art, poetry, and literature capturing India’s diversity.
- Breakthroughs in AI for code to automate software development.
A national pool of PhD scholars and post-doctoral researchers will receive generous fellowships and funding to work on these mission-oriented projects aimed at technological leapfrogging.
India’s startup ecosystem will likely see a boom of generative AI-focused firms across industries. Lucrative grants and market access support will be available for startups translating cutting-edge generative R&D into real-world solutions. India can become the launchpad for innovation delivering benefits across emerging economies.
Upskilling and Democratizing Access
A national AI tutoring institute is envisioned to provide globally benchmarked and accredited courses to lakhs of students annually. A network of data annotation centers will drive the cost-efficient development of multimodal Indic language datasets. Students will also have paid apprenticeship opportunities to contribute to public datasets and research initiatives.
Low-code/no-code generative AI platforms tailored for Indian businesses and startups will democratize access allowing rapid application development by non-experts. Cloud credits and subsidies for server access costs will help startups experiment in the exponential era.
Supercharging Job Creation
Over the next decade, Generative AI can energize India’s IT industry and job market. Indian IT majors are repurposing roles for the AI-first future by training millions of employees in deep learning and neural networks. AI and data science job creation is already growing at over 30% annually. By 2030, India could have over 5 million roles and livelihoods connected to developing, deploying, and regulating generative AI across sectors.
Strategic Focus Areas
Some of the promising application areas for India to lead the way globally over the next decade include:
- Healthcare: Drug discovery using generative AI, diagnostic support AI agents in Indian languages.
- Agriculture: Autonomous farm robots, crop disease early warning systems via multimodal AI.
- Scientific Research: AI-discovered new materials, automated lab experiments, and open science data platforms.
- Connectivity: Widely accessible virtual reality, next-gen apps with voice recognition in Indian languages.
- Environment: Tracking climate patterns using geospatial intelligence, and predictive analytics for sustainability.
- Education: Adaptive learning software and gamification, teacher AI assistants to make quality education affordable and accessible.
- Policymaking: Data-driven policy simulation, strategic foresight from multimodal predictive models.
- Finance: Fraud analytics, risk models for financial inclusion, process automation.
- Media and Entertainment: Democratized generative content creation tools for user-generated crypto media economies.
By bringing together data, infrastructure, skills, research, regulation, and entrepreneurial energy – India’s trillion-dollar opportunity to lead the responsible global AI revolution may just be on the horizon.
Conclusion
We stand today at possibly the most exciting juncture in technology, business, and society. Generative AI can radically transform India if we can harness it optimally. With the pace of change accelerating, we must act strategically and generously to invest in realizing India’s AI dreams. This is the time to seize the opportunity and shape an AI-charged future designed by Indians and for Indians. The possibilities ahead are limited only by our imagination and resolve. The future beckons India to lead.
Mohammed Shahid Kolhar
Chief Technology Officer
SkillLiftt