Centres of Excellence in AI will spur growth of new startups: Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan

These AI centres of excellence assume immense significance in the global public policy and economy sectors, the minister said

More than a year after the Union government announced that it would establish specialised centres where artificial intelligence innovation would be fostered, the Centre launched three AI Centres of Excellence (CoE) in the sectors of agriculture, health and sustainable cities.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during the unveiling of the 2023-2024 Union Budget, had announced that the government will establish three centres of excellence with a budget outlay of nearly Rs 1,000 crore.

Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who inaugurated the event, claimed that these Centres of Excellence would spur the growth of new startups in the country and assume immense significance in the global public policy and economy sectors.

A consortium of IIT Delhi and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, is heading the Centre of Excellence, which will focus on healthcare.

Also read: What are the government's AI Centres of Excellence, and what will the three of them do?

IIT Ropar will head the one for agriculture, and IIT Kanpur will steer the CoE for sustainable cities.

The launching event was also presided over by Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu, who acted as the co-chair for the apex committee that was behind the formation of the 3 CoEs.

Vembu while praising the proposals that had come in for these centres, said he would love to invest in these solutions.

Kritika Rangarajan, a professor at AIIMS Delhi said that the healthcare CoE has already started working on the country's national health programs focusing on areas such as cancer screening, chronic disorder management visual impairment and so on.

IIT Delhi, the second consortium partner responsible for the healthcare excellence centre, will be focusing on upscaling and upskilling.

The institute will be working on building a platform where multiple AI applications can seamlessly integrate. It will also leverage digital public good such as National Health Authority and so on.

Similarly, Pushpendu Singh of IIT Ropar said that the main objective of the agriculture AI CoE was to ensure "quality food for everyone, increasing yield."

Singh said that the CoE would be tackling problems such as decreasing land, improving the potential of Indian livestock and so on.

Lastly, Sachidanand Tripathy of IIT Kanpur said that centre for sustainable cities would largely be working be focusing largely on figuring out ways on how to decrease pollution levels in cities.

In this regard, Tripathy said that the centre of excellence is already working on an indigenous application to measure particulate matter (PM) levels in the air.

Tripathy also said that works were underway for leveraging AI in scheduling -- ensuring cargo lorries and trucks have technology-enabled inputs which would improve their efficiency.

Tripathy said that these would have immense significance in the natural gas industry, and that IIT Kanpur is also working with Adani Total Gas Ltd in this regard.