IndiaAI Mission: Democratizing access to AI compute

The world is experiencing an intelligence revolution driven by artificial intelligence (AI), which is a key technology that has the power to transform all industries – from healthcare to governance. For India, this presents a key opportunity to achieve inclusive development and technological independence. To leverage on AI’s potential, the nation’s Union Cabinet is backing the IndiaAI Mission with an outlay of over Rs. 10,300 crore (US$ 1.2 billion). This mission represents India’s all-encompassing, whole-of-government approach based on a radical principle: to democratize high-performance AI compute. Its mission is to ensure that the benefits of AI can be brought together and made available to Indian entrepreneurs, innovators and citizens. At its core, the IndiaAI Mission is about building AI in India and, more importantly, making it work for the nation; to transform a challenge into an opportunity that can drive massive growth in the country.

Why the IndiaAI Mission matters: The trinity of sovereignty, opportunity and resilience

The strategic relevance of the IndiaAI Mission is based on three fundamental national imperatives:

• Cutting through reliance on foreign tech: Attaining digital sovereignty

  The AI race is, at its core, a compute power race. Traditionally this power, which is in the form of high-end graphics processing units (GPUs), has been controlled by limited world-wide players. The complete use of foreign infrastructure and models is a great threat to the concept of digital sovereignty. It exposes the country to geopolitical supply chain interference, data administration and patterns that might not be capable of adequately grasping the cultural, linguistic and socio-economic peculiarities of India. This is explicitly addressed by the IndianAI Mission by constructing a huge, native compute backbone.

• Providing opportunities to Indian startups, entrepreneurs and industries

  High-end AI computing is expensive and poses a huge barrier to entry for Indian developers. A small company or a university researcher does not usually possess the financial resources it would cost to train a state-of-the-art large language model (LLM). The IndiaAI Mission changes all that with its government subsided equitable access to this essential system. This democratization creates a healthy ecosystem of Indian entrepreneurs and can help transform all intelligent students in a Tier-II or Tier-III city into a prospective AI pioneer.

• Creating an inclusive ecosystem

  The primary objective of the mission is to develop AI solutions in India, for India. The focus is on creating technologies that are multilingual, context-aware, and tailored to the country’s unique social and economic landscape. The mission aims to leverage AI across key sectors that are vital for national development, including improving healthcare access for rural populations, enhancing agricultural productivity for farmers, and promoting good governance through inclusive and data-driven policymaking.

The seven pillars of the mission: India’s vision of an AI future

IndiaAI Mission will be based on seven pillars that will focus on each of the key layers of the AI eco system:

• Compute infrastructure: The AI powerhouse

  The aim is to create a scalable AI computing ecosystem. The approach involves putting a vast cluster of state-of-the-art GPUs at work with public-private partnerships (PPP) and make this available on a general cloud. This platform where AI will be offered is called AI Marketplace. It will be able to distribute pre-trained models and provide AI as a Service (AIaaS), ultimately leading to a convenient place where all necessary AI resources are available at an affordable price.

• Innovation centers and foundational models

  It aims to focus on building indigenous large multimodal models (LMMs) and domain-specific foundational models that are bespoke to Indian requirement. It is about nurturing an entire ecosystem of AI innovation centers that research, develop and deploy models trained on Indian-specific data, including the country’s particular linguistic diversity and data diversity.

• Datasets platform (AI Kosh)

  The Quality of AI requires quality data. AI Kosh (dataset platform) aims to collect, clean and offer ethical access for non-personal high-quality datasets to Indian researchers and startups. This large, unified data platform is critical to train foundation models that are culturally and linguistically relevant.

• Application development initiative

  This is the pillar that encourages development of disruptive AI products in critical areas such as healthcare, agriculture, and governance. It is aimed at tackling real-life challenge statements from the government ministries and departments to enable AI deployment for big social impact.

• Startup financing

  Creating deep-tech AI requires long, risk-taking capital. This pillar is intended to streamline the funding process for deep-tech AI startups and fast-track the transition from idea to implementation and not let lack of funds block innovative and exciting projects.

• Skilling: The FutureSkills program

  The largest asset that India possesses is talent pool. However, this talent must be prepared to address the future. The IndiaAI FutureSkills aims to lower the barrier for entry, by massively scaling up AI-focused courses at all levels - UG, PG and PhD programs. Most importantly, it includes setting up data and AI labs in Tier-II and Tier-III cities so that the AI revolution is not just concentrated in the metropolitan centers.

• Safe & responsible AI

  This is the ethical compass of the mission. By rolling out responsible AI projects, building native tools, and establishing governance frameworks, it drives responsible development and prudent deployment and usage of AI. Creation of the IndiaAI Safety Institute as part of this pillar is critical to inspire confidence among the public and to make AI systems ethical, transparent, and secure.

Future outlook: A vision of democratic, inclusive, and ethical AI

The IndiaAI Mission comprises a clear and broad range vision of the country, which makes it a Global AI Hub by 2047 when the country will celebrate its 100th anniversary of independence. This is an ambition that is supported by strategic pillars in areas so as to enhance self-reliance in technology and global leadership.

The path would entail development of indigenous GPU that will enable India to no longer depend on hardware imports. Instead, it would help the country design and produce semiconductors specifically designed to run AI. Simultaneously, the emphasis in the multilingual models will lead to global-scale Indian language LLMs, which will set the standard of extremely successful AI in other linguistically differentiated countries of the Global South. Additionally, the adoption of AI to implement digital public infrastructure (DPI) will be transformative to governance, whereby existing platforms such as Aadhaar and UPI shall be enhanced to provide customized and effective services to India’s citizens, thus making the country a global case study in AI governance.

By collectively prioritizing a robust domestic AI ecosystem, securing investment in compute power, and cultivating an immense talent pool, India is transitioning from a consumer to a net-exporter of AI solutions and talent. It is aimed at becoming a powerful demonstration of an ethical, inclusive, and fair AI system that utilizes emerging technology to significantly decrease inequality and promote the development of the country. By democratizing AI compute for the innovators across the country, IndiaAI Mission is ushering in a future of limitless innovation and reiterating India’s commitment to inclusive global leadership in AI. It is the beginning of Bharat’s AI century.

FAQs

What is the IndiaAI Mission?

It is a government initiative with an outlay of Rs 10,300 crore to build indigenous AI infrastructure and democratize access to high-performance compute resources.

What is the main objective of the Mission?

To make AI development resources accessible to all Indian innovators, startups and researchers, ensuring equitable participation in the AI economy.

Why is AI computing so critical for innovation?

High-performance AI compute, mainly powered by GPUs, is essential for training advanced AI models such as LLMs and AI applications.

What is the AI Marketplace under this Mission?

It is a centralized platform offering AIaaS and access to pre-trained models and compute resources for developers.

What is AI Kosh?

AI Kosh is a unified data platform offering high-quality, non-personal datasets to researchers and startups for training AI models.