The Growing Popularity of Artificial Intelligence among Indian Startups

With humans probing deeper into the world of technology, artificial intelligence or AI is now ubiquitous.Interestingly, although Artificial Intelligence is a technology of interest right now, the concept has been around for more than seven decades now. American computer and cognitive scientist, John McCarthy first coined the term Artificial Intelligence, back in 1956. The term was used to help explain the computational ability of machines for performing human-like duties, and also identify conversations in natural languages from around the world.

In terms of Artificial Intelligence becoming mainstream, the year 2018 is when it really hit home,especially in India.

The rising tide of Artificial Intelligence in India

From the Indian government banking on Artificial Intelligence to the fashion industry incorporating this technology to bring about ground-breaking inventions, a lot has gone down on this front in India in recent years.

In June 2018, NITI Aayog, a policy think tank of the Government of India, released a report offering recommendations and roadmap for the development of Artificial Intelligence in India. It is expected that AI could extensively help in the social and economic development of the country. Beside this, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology also established four panels on multiple aspects of Artificial Intelligence. Interestingly, this has also ushered a strong interest in many technical professionals to pursue an artificial intelligence course.

Just one example of how effective the use of AI can be is the latest collaboration between Google and DeepMind. Both the companies are owned by Alphabet and they have a newly developed AI that helps system predict the power generated by wind farms up to 36 hours in advance. This helps grid managers to plan ahead in terms of availability.

AI and Indian start-ups

NASSCOM has stated that there has been a 108% growth in the funding received by startups in India in 2018. These reports also shed light on the fact that Artificial Intelligence was one of the domains that witnessed the fastest adoption among various industry sectors. At present, around 400 startups in India are invested in work which involves Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning. Private players alone have supplied over USD 150 million to the AI sector in India, and their numbers have been growing further since 2016.

At present, several startups located in major cities across India including Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi and Hyderabad have been working on the principles of artificial intelligence to serve consumers better.The products by these companies are varied, and go on to include multi-lingual chat bots, automated consumer data analysis to online shopping assistance. These companies operate in some of the key sectors such as e-commerce, edtech, fintech, healthcare and so on. Rubique, for example, is a fintech company that uses AI to match suitable borrower with the perfect lender. Credit policies of various banks are linked to its system. The company's self-learning algorithm sends matching loan offers to borrowers.

What's in the offing in the near future?

AI-based systems require a huge quantum of data to work. So although AI had been around for years as a field of study, it is only now that it is seeing implementation on a mass level. The surge is inevitable, and its adoption, pertinent.

A staunch indicator of this shift is the growing availability of online courses in Artificial intelligence, which has aided the significant growth in the nation's STEM talent. From where things stand, it won't be long before India is utilizing AI for its economic growth and the enhancement of the lives of its citizens.

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