Allocations must for original research on AI

Ganesh Parkar, Head of Global Sales at Decimal Technologies

“Being at the frontier of AI development is key for India as many legacy and emergent problems can be solved with the application of AI an ML techniques. With its vast and connected populace, India is sitting on one of the largest data mines in the world. Each and every transaction at a retail counter, in a hospital, in a bank is a data point that can be collected and analysed.

While we have no dearth of IT talent, India still lags significantly on generating original research and applications of AI in comparison to rest of the world.

In the 2021 budget, we would expect the Indian government to make allocations for original research on AI. AI and ML technology without reliable data is meaningless. There should also be allocations for creation of data banks at an industry and potentially even at pan industry level - especially for use cases in healthcare, finance, retail and FMCG. To speed up application of AI in real world scenarios, the government should explore hackathon contests to bring India’s hidden talent in the forefront and leverage their expertise to become an AI leader.”