Artificial intelligence in India

The artificial intelligence (AI) market in India is projected to reach $8 billion by 2025, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 40% from 2020 to 2025. This growth is part of the broader AI boom, a global period of rapid technological advancements with India being pioneer starting in the early 2010s with NLP based Chatbots from Haptik, Corover.ai, Niki.ai and then gaining prominence in the early 2020s based on reinforcement learning, marked by breakthroughs such as generative AI models from OpenAI, Krutrim and Alphafold by Google DeepMind. In India, the development of AI has been similarly transformative, with applications in healthcare, finance, and education, bolstered by government initiatives like NITI Aayog's 2018 National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence. Institutions such as Indian Statistical Institute and Indian Institute of Science published breakthrough AI research papers and patents.
In India, AI has been used in medical devices, medical reports, predicting advertising & marketing results, do product design & development, healthcare & cognitive testing with diagnostic AI. Generative AI is being used by Indian brands for product ideation, visual concept development, social post creation.
While AI presents significant opportunities for economic growth and social development in India, challenges such as data privacy concerns, skill shortages, and ethical considerations need to be addressed for responsible AI deployment.
The TIFRAC (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Automatic Calculator) was designed and developed by a team led by Rangaswamy Narasimhan between 1954 and 1960. He worked on pattern recognition from 1961 to 1964 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Digital Computer Laboratory. In order to conduct research on database technology, computer networking, computer graphics, and systems software, he and M. G. K. Menon founded the National Centre for Software Development and Computing Techniques. In 1965, he established the Computer Society of India and supervised the initial research work on AI at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Jagdish Lal launched the first computer science program in 1976 at Motilal Nehru Regional Engineering College. H. K. Kesavan from the University of Waterloo and Vaidyeswaran Rajaraman from the University of Wisconsin–Madison joined the IIT Kanpur Electrical Engineering Department in 1963–1964 as Assistant Professor and Head of Department, respectively. H.N. Mahabala, who was employed at Bendix Corporation's Computer Division, joined the department in 1965. He previously worked with Marvin Minsky. The IIT Kanpur Computer Center was led by H. K. Kesavan, with Vaidyeswaran Rajaraman serving as his deputy. Kesavan informally permitted Rajaraman and Mahabala to introduce artificial intelligence into computer science classes. The computer science program was approved by IIT Kanpur in 1971 and split out from the electrical engineering department. In 1973, an IBM System/370 Model 155 was installed at IIT Madras. John McCarthy, head of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford University visited IIT Kanpur in 1971. He donated PDP-1 with a time-sharing operating system. During the 1970s, the balance of payments deficit in India restricted import of computers. The Department of Computer Science and Automation at the Indian Institute of Science established in 1969, played an important role in nurturing the development of data science and artificial intelligence in India. First course on AI was introduced in 1970's by G. Krishna. B. L. Deekshatulu introduced the first course on pattern recognition in early 1970s.
In the 1980s, the Indian Statistical Institute's Optical Character Recognition Project was one of the country's first attempts at studying artificial intelligence and machine learning. OCR technology has benefited greatly from the work of ISI's Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Unit, which is headed by Bidyut Baran Chaudhuri. He also contributed in the development of computer vision and digital image processing. As part of the Indian Fifth Generation Computer Systems Research Programme, the Department of Electronics, with support from the United Nations Development Programme, initiated the Knowledge Based Computer Systems Project in 1986, marking the beginning of India's first major AI research program. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi requested that the Department of Electronics and IISc to initiate the Parallel Processing Project in 1986–1987. The Center for Development of Advanced Computing eventually joined those efforts. IIT Madras was selected to develop system diagnosis, ISI for image processing, National Centre for Software Technology for natural language processing and TIFR for speech processing.
In 1987, the proposal of N. Seshagiri, Director General of the National Informatics Centre for the prototype development of supercomputer was cleared. Negotiations for a Cray supercomputer were underway between the Reagan administration and the Rajiv Gandhi government. US Defense Secretaries Frank Carlucci and Caspar Weinberger visited New Delhi after the US approved the transfer in 1988. The sale of a lower-end XMP-14 supercomputer was permitted in lieu of the Cray XMP-24 supercomputer due to security concerns. The Center for Development of Advanced Computing was formally established in March 1988 by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (previously the Ministry of IT) within the Department of Information Technology (formerly the Department of Electronics) in response to a recommendation made to the Prime Minister by the Scientific Advisory Council. The National Initiative in Supercomputing, which produced the PARAM series, was led by Vijay P. Bhatkar. For the first ten years, supercomputing and Indian language computing were the two main focus areas. C-DAC has expanded its operations in order to meet the needs in a number of domains, including network and internet software, real-time systems, artificial intelligence, and NLP.
Under the direction of Professor KV Ramakrishnamacharyulu from National Sanskrit University and Professor Rajeev Sangal from the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, the Akshar Bharati Research Group was established in 1984 with support from IIT Kanpur and the University of Hyderabad for computational processing of Indian languages. They focused on computational linguistics, NLP with ontological database systems, and Indian language/translation theories with linguistic tradition.
From IIT Kanpur, Mohan Tambe joined C-DAC in the 1990s to work on Graphics and Intelligence based Script Technology (GIST), which addressed the challenge of adapting personal computer software based on Latin script to Devanagiri and a number of other Indian language scripts. He was previously working on the Machine Translation for Indian languages Project. Within C-DAC, he established the GIST group. The technology was expanded to encompass NLP, artificial intelligence-based machine-aided language learning and translation, multimedia and multilingual computing solutions, and more. GIST resulted in the creation of G-CLASS (GIST cross language search plug-ins suite), a cross-language search engine. The Applied Artificial Intelligence Group at C-DAC has developed some basic and novel applications in the field of NLP, including machine translation, information extraction/retrieval, automatic summarization, speech recognition, text-to-speech synthesis, intelligent language teaching, and natural language-based document management with Decision Support Systems. These applications are the result of the foundation laid by previous language technology activities. Software firms in the Indian private sector began looking into AI applications, mostly in the area of business process automation.
In order to allow machines to read, comprehend, and interpret human languages, the Language Technologies Research Center was founded in October 1999 at the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad. It focused on the advancements in semantic parsing, information extraction, natural language generation, sentiment analysis, and dialogue systems.
Some of the early AI research in India was driven by societal needs. For example;
Around 2003, language technology, computer vision, and data science research groups were established at the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad. With an emphasis on applied and translational research, the institute has the largest group of AI and machine learning researchers in India as of 2023. They also work on blockchain and quantum computing. In partnership with Intel, they created the Indian Driving Dataset, which contains the largest amount of road data for unstructured driving situations worldwide.
The Government of Karnataka established the Machine Intelligence & Robotics CoE (MINRO) at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bengaluru in 2018 with the goal of creating frameworks and regulations for ethical and responsible AI technologies. It researches on human-machine interface, industrial robotics and automation, data science and analysis, pattern recognition, machine intelligence, and AI systems.
NITI Aayog signed partnership agreement with Microsoft in 2018 to help expedite the use of AI for the development and adoption of local language computing, and to create farm advice services. Microsoft-NITI Aayog Problem to Solution Incubation Test Bed will be established. Microsoft will also help develop AI-assisted models for diabetic retinopathy screening.
INDIAai, a collaborative initiative of the National E-Government Division and NASSCOM for AI-related advancements, was introduced by Ravi Shankar Prasad on May 30, 2020. In partnership with Intel and the Ministry of Education, the Responsible AI for Youth Program was also introduced to foster the development of AI-related skills. The Yardi School of Artificial Intelligence was founded in September 2020 by IIT Delhi to advance research in AI, ML, and data science in the fields of healthcare, materials science, robotics, industry 4.0, weather prediction, and transportation. $10 million was contributed by Yardi Systems' Anant Yardi in 2021 for education, infrastructure and research related activities. Sharad Kumar Saraf and Sudarshan Kumar Saraf, the founders of Technocraft Industries, donated ₹15 crore to establish the Technocraft Centre for Applied Artificial Intelligence at IIT Bombay in March 2021. In 2021, the Mehta Family Foundation and IIT Guwahati signed an MoU to establish the Mehta Family School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence.
According to Stanford University's annual AI Index report, India ranked fifth globally in 2022 in terms of investments received by businesses offering AI products and services.
The Centre for Machine Intelligence and Data Science was officially opened by IIT Bombay on April 28, 2023. The National Research Foundation was created to advance research in a variety of fields, including AI with a budget of ₹50,000 crore for five years.
The Union Cabinet approved an extension of the Digital India program in 2023, allocating ₹14,903 crore starting FY2021-22 to FY2025-26 for the addition of nine new supercomputers under the National Super Computer Mission. All 22 of the Schedule 8 languages will be available for Bhashini. There will be the establishment of three AI Centers of Excellence focused on sustainable cities, agriculture, and health. Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed international concerns about the negative use of artificial intelligence during a virtual G20 conference hosted by India in November 2023.
To assist the Indian government and policymakers on data science and AI-related policy issues, Sunil Wadhwani gave ₹110 crore to IIT Madras in 2024 for Wadhwani School of Data Science and AI. The institute will combine fundamental and applied research in systems biology, manufacturing, energy and the environment, healthcare, agriculture, smart cities and transportation, financial analytics, and defense.
India invested $1.25 billion (₹10,372 crore) on IndiaAI Mission. With a budget of ₹990 crore, Dharmendra Pradhan announced on October 15, 2024, the creation of three AI Centers of Excellence in New Delhi: one for agricultural (under IIT Ropar), one for sustainable cities (under IIT Kanpur), and one for healthcare (under AIIMS and IIT Delhi). The Center for Generative AI, Shrijan at IIT Jodhpur was established on 25 October 2024 by Meta Platforms and IndiaAI to support long-term sustainability of Foundation Models and GenAI research in healthcare, education, agriculture, smart cities, smart mobility, sustainability, financial inclusion, and social inclusion. Additionally, the YuvAI initiative for Skilling and Capacity Building was launched in collaboration with the All India Council for Technical Education to advance open-source AI. Meta has pledged to donate up to ₹750 lakhs over a three-year period. Gati Shakti Vishwavidyalaya, the Institute of Human Behavior and Allied Sciences, the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Jodhpur, will work together with Shrijan. In November 2024, the Karnataka government approved a ₹28 crore investment to construct a Center of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence in Bengaluru.
The construction of a 3 GW data center for AI services in Jamnagar was announced by Reliance Industries in 2025.
The mission which has a five-year budget of ₹3,660 crore, was authorized by the Union Cabinet in December 2018 under the Department of Science and Technology. A technological vertical in AI and ML, IoT, data bank and DaaS, data analysis, autonomous systems and robotics, cyber security, and quantum engineering has been assigned to each of the 25 technological innovation hubs that have been formed.
To translate academic research on AI at the proof of concept stage into commercially viable goods and services, IIT Kharagpur established the AI4ICPS Innovation Hub Foundation in 2020. Under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS), the Department of Science and Technology awarded it a grant of ₹170 crore.
With a seed money of ₹230 crore from the Department of Science and Technology and the Government of Karnataka, an Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Technology Park was established at the Indian Institute of Science as not-for-profit foundation in November 2020 for mission-mode research and development projects in cyber-security, healthcare, education, mobility, infrastructure, agriculture, and retail.
TiHAN at IIT Hyderabad hosted India's first Autonomous Navigations Testbed Facility (Aerial & Terrestrial) in 2022, which was opened by Jitendra Singh Rana from Ministry of Science and Technology to develop next-generation autonomous navigation technology.
To develop spectral and energy-efficient wireless communications technology for 5G and 5G-Advanced, Kiran Kumar Kuchi of IIT Hyderabad and IIITB Comet Foundation in 2024 developed an O-RAN base station solution that triples capacity and improves cell coverage when compared to 4G networks.
Technology Innovation Hubs
India currently does not have specific laws regulating artificial intelligence (AI). However, the Indian government has introduced several initiatives and guidelines aimed at the responsible development and deployment of AI technologies. The Indian government has tasked NITI Aayog, its apex public policy think tank, with establishing guidelines and policies for AI. In 2018, NITI Aayog released the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence, also known as #AIForAll, which focuses on healthcare, agriculture, education, smart cities, and smart mobility.
In 2021, NITI Aayog published the "Principles for Responsible AI," addressing ethical considerations for AI deployment in India. These principles cover system considerations, such as decision-making and accountability, and societal considerations, such as the impact of automation on employment. The second part of this document, "Operationalizing Principles for Responsible AI," released in August 2021, focuses on implementing these ethical principles through regulatory and policy interventions, capacity building, and incentivizing ethical practices.
In 2023, the Indian government enacted the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, which addresses some privacy concerns related to AI platforms. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has also issued advisories requiring platforms to obtain explicit permission before deploying unreliable AI models and to label AI-generated content to prevent misuse. India is a member of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), which promotes the responsible use of AI through international collaboration. In 2023, the GPAI Summit was held in New Delhi, where experts discussed responsible AI, data governance, and the future of work.
Other Indian agencies, such as the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), are also working on AI policies. BIS has established a committee to propose draft standards for AI, focusing on safety, reliability, and ethical considerations. India has not yet enacted specific AI regulations. However, the government has introduced measures to promote innovation and address ethical concerns and risks associated with AI. These efforts aim to support the growth of India's AI ecosystem and ensure responsible AI deployment.
India has launched an AI Data Bank aimed at fostering innovation and enhancing national security. This initiative is designed to harness the power of artificial intelligence by providing a centralized repository of data that can be utilized across various sectors, including governance, business, healthcare, education, and space exploration. By facilitating access to crucial information, the AI Data Bank will support research and development efforts, stimulate technological advancements, and bolster the country’s security framework. This strategic move underscores India's commitment to leveraging AI for national progress and safeguarding its interests in an increasingly digital world.
The Bharat GPT is a non-profit initiative, started in February 2023. The goal is to develop India focused multilingual, multimodal large language models and generative pre-trained transformer. Together with the applications and implementation frameworks, the Bharat GPT Consortium intends to publish a series of foundation models in order to meet the needs of developers and businesses. The Bharat GPT Consortium was established in 2022 under the public-private partnership with IIT Bombay, Jio Platforms, NASSCOM, Seetha Mahalaxmi Healthcare, Digital India Bhashini Division (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology), IIT Madras, IIT Mandi, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Kanpur, International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, and Indian Institute of Management Indore as members.
The Bharat GPT development team is led by Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan of IIT Bombay as principal investigator, with support from Professor Mohan Raghavan and Professor Maunendra Sankar Desarkar of IIT Hyderabad, Professor Rohit Saluja of IIT Mandi, Professor V Kamakoti of IIT Madras, Professor Arnab Bhattacharya of IIT Kanpur, Professor Kshitij Jadhav of IIT Bombay, Professor Maheshwari of IIM Indore, and Professor Ravi Kiran of IIIT-Hyderabad. The text-based foundation model will be released first, followed by speech and video models. In addition to licensing commercial use, the effort has been open-sourcing a large portion of its work. Bharat GPT is anticipated to be activated by speech and gesture recognition.
On December 27, 2023, Akash Ambani announced that Jio Platforms and IIT Bombay were collaborating on Bharat GPT program. Jio Platforms will assist Bharat GPT with specialized downstream telecom and retail applications by developing smaller, customized models. By investigating the potential of AI to foster innovation across a range of goods and services, Jio hopes to achieve its larger goal of establishing a whole ecosystem of growth through Bharat GPT. Bharat GPT Consortium is assisting in the interpretation of official documents, such as court orders, in close collaboration with the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances.
India's first ChatGPT-style service, will be launched in March 2024 by Bharat GPT Consortium, with assistance from the Department of Science and Technology, and Reliance Industries. The four primary areas in which Bharat GPT sees its model operating are healthcare, financial services, governance, and education, supporting 11 Indian languages.
Seetha Mahalaxmi Healthcare (SML) revealed the Hanooman series LLM in February 2024 in collaboration with the Bharat GPT Consortium. Among the Hanooman series, the first four AI models—1.5 billion, 7 billion, 13 billion, and 40 billion parameters in size—will be made available as open-source after being trained on 22 Indian languages. The ability to generate text-to-text, text-to-video, speech synthesis and speech recognition will be aided by Hanooman's multimodal learning capability. SML is negotiating with healthcare organizations, BFSI, and mobile app developers to create customized models by refining the Hanooman series. The healthcare model VizzhyGPT is the first of these refined iterations, having been trained on extensive multiomics, clinical research, and electronic health record data.
Hanooman's alpha version, which lacks multimodal features and internet access, was launched on May 10, 2024, in 98 international languages, including 12 Indian languages (Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Kannada, Odia, Punjabi, Assamese, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Sindhi). It enables tutoring, coding, and conversation. The platform is collaborating with NASSCOM, Hewlett-Packard, and the Government of Telangana. Yotta Infrastructure will supply GPU cloud infrastructure. As of May 14, 2024, the Hanooman chatbot is accessible via both a web-client and an Android application.
Hanooman is jointly owned by SML and 3AI Holding Limited, an AI investment company based in Abu Dhabi. Both businesses will own 50% share under joint ownership arrangement. In order to improve Hanooman's text, voice, image, and coding capabilities for users, it will be able to access 3AI Holding's Omega GenAI, which is being created with 665 billion parameters and 20 trillion tokens. For business clients, Hanooman will launch a proprietary model.
IIT Bombay Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan thought of creating a homegrown solution that would use GenAI and take into account the linguistic and cultural diversity of India. An open-source, multimodal, multilingual, India-centric foundation model called BharatGen was formally introduced on September 30, 2024. With an investment of less than ₹235 crore (US$27 million), the Department of Science and Technology is funding the project under National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems. Due to security concerns in mission-critical applications like defense, the project gained strategic importance and aims to reduce reliance on foreign AI models. Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan has been advocating for a public–private partnership in AI through the Bharat GPT program. The earlier Bharat GPT efforts have taken on a more formal role in the BharatGen project, which is anticipated for completion by 2026.
As a national mission, BharatGen has been set up to facilitate inter-ministerial cooperation by taking whole-of-government approach. The AI will be developed from the ground up, guaranteeing that all intellectual property stays in the country. IndiaAI Compute Facility will spearhead the project. BharatGen will have robust academic base, incorporating faculty and research institutions into its ecosystem to guarantee sustained innovation. Yotta Infrastructure, and Neysa are providing cloud support.
The backend algorithm development and the necessary technical work was done by a collaborative team from BharatGen consortium. As of February 2025, the BharatGen consortium has 50–60 researchers and a wide range of student contributors from the Indian Institute of Management Indore, the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, IIT Bombay, IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Mandi, and IIT Madras. BharatGen consortium will work with behavioral economists, engineers, AI researchers, and design specialists, to develop a multidisciplinary strategy to use AI to address India's problems. The AI model takes into account the 1,600 languages and scripts that make up the Indian knowledge system. Each institute of the consortium is investigating particular tasks to create models in voice, language, and vision.
As of January 30, 2025, the framework for the AI model is ready. The development team has spent the last one and a half years working on the project. The initial version should be available in four to ten months, according to Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Electronics and IT.
In order to concentrate on primary data collection, BharatGen started the Bharat Data Sagar initiative, a multilingual repository for AI research. The goal of this data collection is to satisfy the need for training data for Indian languages that are underrepresented in data corpora. It will capture the Indian linguistic nuances, which are frequently disregarded in international AI models. BharatGen offers tools and technologies to facilitate the creation of region specific tailored content by translating between local languages and dialects. In order to accurately portray India's languages, dialects, and cultural context, BharatGen focuses on gathering and curating data unique to the nation.
Using vision language models, BharatGen launched e-vikrAI in October 2024. It makes e-commerce easier for non-English speaking vendors by automating the cataloguing process and doing away with the need for human input. Sellers only need to provide an image of their product to get auto-generated titles, descriptions, features, and pricing recommendations. e-vikrAI improves accessibility by translating and vocalizing product descriptions in Indian languages.
On January 30, 2025, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister for Electronics & Information Technology, confirmed that the IndiaAI Mission would customize native AI solutions for the Indian context using Indian languages, supported by a state-of-the-art shared computing infrastructure. The initial AI model starts with a compute capacity of about 10,000 GPUs, with the remaining 8693 GPUs to be added shortly. The facility includes 7,200 AMD Instinct MI200 and MI300 series, 12,896 Nvidia H100, and 1,480 Nvidia H200 processors. The cost of computing the AI model will be less than ₹100 per hour following a 40% government subsidy, with half-yearly and annual plans for developers, researchers, and students.
Accessing more expensive GPUs would cost ₹150 per hour, while utilizing less expensive GPUs would cost ₹115.85 per hour. Orient Technologies, CMS Computers Limited, SHI Locuz, CtrlS, NxtGen Cloud Technologies, Yotta Infrastructure, Jio Platforms, Tata Communications, E2E Networks, and Vensysco Technologies have been approved by the government to provide 18,693 GPUs.
India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry signed a memorandum of cooperation on October 29, 2018, which outlines the two nations' cooperation in AI and IoT as part of India-Japan Cooperation on Digital Partnership. In an effort to strengthen ties between NITI Aayog and METI, India and Japan signed a broad statement of intent on AI under "Society 5.0" that included the exploration of potential institutional collaborations, such as joint projects between IIT Hyderabad and Artificial Intelligence Research Centre (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology), related to machine learning, deep learning, data mining, and other AI themes. Joint scientific and technological cooperation in ML, and probabilistic logic techniques for various data types and combinations were added to the extended MoU on December 24, 2021.
In 2021, the Indian Department of Science and Technology and the United States Department of State were designated as the nodal agencies for the US India Artificial Intelligence Initiative launched under Indo-US Science and Technology Forum. It will provide a forum for bilateral research and development cooperation. It will also facilitate AI innovation, exchange ideas for building an AI workforce, and suggest ways to promote collaborations.
The United States and India expanded their joint cyber training and exercises in 2022 and initiated the Defense Artificial Intelligence Dialogue. According to Cleo Paskal, a non-resident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Indian community has influenced artificial intelligence research and development in the United States for many years. Things are taken to the next level by the Defense Artificial Intelligence Dialogue. In the same year, the US intends to join six of India's Technology Innovation Hubs to support collaborative research projects in fields including AI, advanced wireless technologies, and data science to further advancements in applications like agriculture, health, and climate. Thirty-five projects have been selected for implementation by the DST and U.S. National Science Foundation.
As part of the United States–India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology, the US and India announced setting aside more than $2 million in 2024 for collaborative research initiatives that will advance AI and quantum technology.
In order to develop advanced driver-assistance systems and vehicular automation technologies that can be used in different parts of the world, the Japanese business Honda began collaborative research on AI technologies with IIT Delhi and IIT Bombay in 2024. This was done in order to further advance the company's own Honda Cooperative Intelligence AI platform.
To create safe, open, secure, and reliable AI, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Emmanuel Macron announced the India-France Roadmap on Artificial Intelligence on February 12, 2025. The goal is to make sure that the rules and guidelines governing the use of AI represent democratic principles and maximize its potential for the advancement of humanity and the common good.
The India-EU Trade and Technology Council has made AI a top priority. In 2025, the European AI Office and the India AI Mission agreed to strengthen collaboration on large language models, including collaborative efforts to create frameworks and tools for responsible and ethical AI. It will expand upon the advancements in high-performance computing applications related to bioinformatics, climate change, and natural disasters that have been made possible by collaborative research and development.
On December 12, 2023, KissanAI announced the release of Dhenu 1.0, world's first agriculture-specific LLM designed for Indian farmers. It can handle 300,000 instruction sets and understand English, Hindi, and Hinglish queries. The platform provides voice-based, tailored assistance. KissanAI used Sarvam AI's OpenHathi for bilingual support and worked with NimbleBox for APIs. Dhenu 1.0 utilizes OpenHermes 2.5 Mistral 7B. KissanAI is supported by Microsoft for Startups. For climate resilient agriculture practices, KissanAI partnered with the United Nations Development Programme in January 2024 to develop a voice-based vernacular GenAI virtual assistant. The main goals of this project are to overcome language barriers and offer easily comprehensible information so that female farmers can actively engage in and profit from generative AI developments. Dhenu2, an open-source version, was launched in October 2024, providing solutions for agribusinesses, farmers, and policymakers worldwide. It is vailable in three models: 8B, 3B, and 1B, and is powered by the Llama 3. The platform is based on 1.5 million synthetic and real-world instructions that cover more than 4,000 agricultural topics and categories. Over 100,000 farmers were interviewed to gain insights that provided practical information for better decision-making.
Uttar Pradesh Open Network for Agriculture, a digital public infrastructure, powered by Gemini and Beckn protocol, was launched in January 2025 by the Government of Uttar Pradesh in collaboration with Google Cloud Platform. Farmers will get one-stop access to market linkages, loans, mechanization, and advisory services for selling their produce. Voice user interface will be available to farmers in Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati, and Punjabi, with other Indian languages to be added in 2025.
AgriHub, a center of excellence for sustainable agriculture co-funded by the MeitY and the Government of Madhya Pradesh, was opened by IIT Indore on January 27, 2025. It will use AI, machine learning, and deep learning to revolutionize the agricultural industry. By using big data analytics and genomic research to support data-driven agriculture, it will enable research in precision agriculture, xerophyte, and AI-driven disease diagnostics.
Farmers in Fazilka have embraced AI-powered weather sensors created by IIT Ropar. It provides real-time information on atmospheric conditions by utilizing data gathered from satellites, weather balloons and a network of weather stations on the ground. Parameters like temperature, humidity, precipitation, and lux are used with data from the India Meteorological Department to forecast rainfall.
AI is being used by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare to assist farmers. An AI-powered chatbot called Kisan e-Mitra was built to help farmers with their questions on Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme in multiple Indian languages. The National Pest Surveillance System uses AI and ML to identify pest infestation, allowing for prompt action for healthier crops and addressing the loss of produce brought on by climate change. AI-based analytics that use field photos to monitor and evaluate crop health utilizing weather, soil moisture, and satellite data for wheat and rice cultivation.
The use of AI in Khutbav village by the Agriculture Development Trust and Microsoft in 2025 led to a 40% increase in yield and a 50% reduction in production costs due to water and pesticide usage. Through a smartphone application Agripilot.ai developed by Click2Cloud, the AI notify farmers of possible pest attacks, soil conditions, air speed, and weather conditions to determine when to apply pesticides and how much water the crop requires. Utilizing a variety of data sources, including satellite imagery, weather forecasts, soil sensors, and inputs unique to each farm, the AI generate personalized suggestions for farmers. Microsoft's Azure Data Manager for Agriculture (formerly Microsoft FarmBeats), is used to process this data. The annual fee for AI services is ₹10,000. In order to offer insights, the data is analyzed by the open-source research project FarmVibes.ai in conjunction with historical crop data. For the farmer, Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service transforms these details into easy-to-follow steps.
In 100 villages, the Assam government will support the establishment of AI-powered agri-hubs, where drones and AI would assist farmers in making data-driven decisions, increasing yields, and promoting sustainability, according to the state budget for 2025–2026.
With an investment of ₹20 crore, Tata Consultancy Services founded the FC Kohli Centre on Intelligent Systems at International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad in 2015 to conduct research in the fields of robotics, cognitive sciences, neural language processing, and intelligent systems.
In March 2018, Capillary Technologies and IIT Kharagpur established the Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence Research for financial analytics, industrial automation, digital healthcare, and intelligent transportation systems, with a combined investment of ₹56.4 million. By March 2019, a second campus at Kukatpallya will open. In July, the Karnataka government and NASSCOM jointly established the Center of Excellence for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence on a public–private partnership for helping small and medium enterprises and make big data sets for training models available.
For fundamental research in deep learning, reinforcement learning, network analytics, interpretable machine learning, and domain-aware AI, Bosch established the Robert Bosch Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at IIT Madras in 2019. The center will concentrate its applied research on systems biology, smart cities, manufacturing analytics, financial analytics, and healthcare. Additionally, it is the location of India's largest deep reinforcement learning group. At the Microsoft Research Lab in Bengaluru, Microsoft introduced Societal Impact through Cloud and Artificial Intelligence in 2019 to use cloud computing and AI to address long-term societal issues in transportation, agriculture, health and wellness, and education.
Accenture opened its first Nano Lab in the Asia–Pacific on February 4, 2020, in Hyderabad, for applied research in security, extended reality, and AI. The Nvidia AI Technology Center was founded at IIT Hyderabad in 2020 with the goal of accelerating AI research and commercialization. It focuses on the application of AI in language comprehension, smart cities, and agriculture. Situational awareness, operator environment analysis, smart appliances, autonomous navigation systems, edge devices for IoT and industry 4.0, and conversational user interfaces were among the AI applications that Tata Elxsi's Artificial Intelligence Centre of Excellence began deploying in 2020. In 2020, Intel established INAI, an applied artificial intelligence research center in Hyderabad, in partnership with the Public Health Foundation of India, IIIT-H, and the Government of Telangana. INAI will focus on population-level issues in the smart mobility and healthcare sectors.
SiMa.ai established a new design center in Bengaluru in 2021 to work on the MLSoC platform, the first machine learning SoC specifically designed for the industry. This platform can support any framework, neural network, or foundational model for any workload.
In 2021, Kotak Mahindra Bank and IISc announced their intention to establish the Kotak-IISc AI-ML Center for research and innovation in fintech, as well as to cultivate the necessary talent pool to satisfy industry demands. Private businesses are attempting to create smaller, less expensive large language model. Examples of these include AI4Bharat's Airawat series, Sarvam AI's OpenHathi series, CoRover.ai's BharatGPT, Tech Mahindra's Indus project, Ola's Krutrim, TWO AI's Sutra series, and SML's series.
IIT Delhi's Yardi School of Artificial Intelligence and an Indian deep tech firm KnowDis are working together to create AI models that could find possible antibodies to treat a variety of illnesses. In part of its $1 billion pledge to accelerate AI-led innovation for the ai360 ecosystem, Wipro announced on August 18, 2023, the opening of a Center of Excellence in Generative Artificial Intelligence in collaboration with IIT Delhi.
In 2025, Citadel Securities and IIT Kanpur announced a collaboration to construct the Translational and Transformative Training and Investigations Laboratory, an advanced GPU research facility for work on machine learning, intelligent systems, data science, data visualization, translational AI, and high-performance computing. Project Waterworth, a 50,000 km undersea cable for high-speed connectivity required to propel AI innovation, was unveiled by Meta on February 14, 2025. It will link South Africa, Brazil, India, the United States, and other regions. India is among the nations with the highest usage of Meta AI on WhatsApp and Instagram.
A task force for the Strategic Implementation of AI for National Security and Defence was established in February 2018 by the Ministry of Defense's Department of Defence Production. The process of getting the military ready for AI use was started by the MoD in 2019. The Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics was approved to develop AI solutions for signal intelligence to improve intelligence collection and analysis capabilities at a cost of ₹73.9 crore and Energy Harvesting Based Infrared Sensor Network for Automated Human Intrusion Detection (EYESIRa) at a cost of ₹1.8 crore. In 2021, the Indian Army, with assistance from the National Security Council, began operating the Quantum Lab and Artificial Intelligence Center at the Military College of Telecommunication Engineering. With an emphasis on robotics and artificial intelligence, Defence Research and Development Organisation and Indian Institute of Science established the Joint Advanced Technology Programme-Center of Excellence. In 2022, the Indian Navy created an AI Core group and set up a Center of Excellence for AI and Big Data analysis at INS Valsura. Indian Army incubated Artificial Intelligence Offensive Drone Operations Project in partnership with an Indian startup. Tonbo Imaging integrated real-time target identification and Edge AI image processing into MPATGM. During Exercise Dakshin Shakti 2021, the Indian Army integrated AI into its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance architecture to provide a cohesive operational intelligence picture of the battlefield.
In 2022, the Indian government established the Defence Artificial Intelligence Council and the Defence AI Project Agency, and it also published a list of 75 defense-related AI priority projects. MoD earmarked ₹1,000 crore annually till 2026 for capacity building, infrastructure setup, data preparation, and Al project implementation. The Indian Army, the Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force set aside ₹100 crore annually for the development of AI-specific applications. The military is already deploying some AI-enabled projects and equipment. At Air Force Station Rajokri, the IAF Centre of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence was established in 2022 as part of the Unit for Digitization, Automation, Artificial Intelligence, and Application Networking (UDAAN). Swarm drone systems were introduced by the Mechanised Infantry Regiment for offensive operations close to LAC.
Grene Robotics revealed Indrajaal Autonomous Drone Defense Dome. For offensive operations, the military began acquiring AI-enabled UAVs and swarm drones. Bharat Electronics developed AI-enabled audio transcription and analysis software for batlefield communication. Using AI during transport operations, the Indian Army's Research & Development branch patented driver tiredness monitoring system. As part of initial investment, the Indian Armed Forces is investing about $50 million (€47.2 million) yearly on AI, according to Delhi Policy Group think tank. For high altitude logistics at forward outposts, military robots are deployed. Army is developing autonomous combat vehicles, robotic surveillance platforms, and Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) solutions as part of the Defence AI roadmap. MCTE is working with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and, Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering & Research, on AI and military-grade chipset. Phase III of AI-enabled space-based surveillance has been authorized.
DRDO Chairman and Secretary of the Department of Defense Research & Development Samir V. Kamat said the agency started concentrating on the potential use of AI in the development of military systems and subsystems. The Indian government intends to leverage the private sector's sizable AI workforce and dual-use technologies for defense by 2026. In order to conduct research on autonomous platforms, improved surveillance, predictive maintenance, and intelligent decision support system, the Indian Army AI Incubation Center was established. Indian Navy launched INS Surat with AI capabilities.
MOI-TD, India's first AI lab in space, is being built by TakeMe2Space. AI's potential utility in space will be demonstrated with the MOI-TD mission. In order to foresee natural disasters and comprehend climate change, the MOI-TD will assist with environmental monitoring, weather pattern analysis, and Earth's surface change tracking. The lab will process the data in real time, allowing for analysis of the information at the time of collection. The MOI-TD mission showed that it was possible to run external code on the satellite, securely downlink encrypted data, and uplink huge AI models from a ground station through OrbitLab, a web-based console. It effectively validated key subsystems, including computer infrastructure (Zero Cube AI Accelerator, POEM Adapter Board), actuators (MagnetoTorquers, AirTorquers, Reaction Wheel), and sensors (Sun Sensor, Horizon Sensor, Solar Cell, IMUs). The foundation for space-based computing is laid by MOI-TD. The creation of space-based data centers will be facilitated by the upcoming MOI-1 AI Lab mission. Support for the project came from the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center. One study by the University of Southampton on TakeMe2Space's AI lab used a low-power AI system to lessen motion blur in satellite imagery.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Qure.ai's AI chest X-ray reporting tool, qXR, was used to identify patients for high, medium, or low risk so that RT-PCR testing could be performed. It can identify pulmonary consolidation, ground-glass opacity, and other signs of COVID-19. The tool provides measurements like the proportion of lung size and volume impacted by the anomalies. The Computational and Data Sciences Collaborative Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence in Medical and Healthcare Imaging was established by Wipro GE HealthCare at IISc in September 2020. Its goal is to develop advanced diagnostic and medical image-reconstruction techniques and protocols for quicker and better imaging by utilizing deep learning, AI, and future-ready digital interfaces.
With an emphasis on neurological disease diagnosis and population-level clinical impact analysis, Siemens Healthineers established the Computational Data Sciences Collaborative Laboratory for AI in Precision Medicine at IISc in 2024 to create open-source AI tools to automate the segmentation of pathological findings in neuroimaging data.
As part of the Interdisciplinary Group for Advanced Research on Birth Outcomes – DBT India Initiative (GARBH-Ini) program, IIT Madras and Translational Health Science and Technology Institute in 2024 created India's first AI model, Garbhini-GA2, which will accurately estimate the age of the fetus in pregnant women in the second and third trimesters. In contrast to the current methods of determining a fetus's age in India, which use the Hadlock model developed using pregnancy data from Western countries or the more recent INTERGROWTH-21st model, the Garbhini-GA2, which is specific to the Indian population, uses genetic algorithm-based methods for estimating gestational age. This model reduces the error by nearly three times. The study was carried out in collaboration with Pondicherry Institute of Medical Sciences, Christian Medical College Vellore, Safdarjung Hospital, and Gurugram Civil Hospital. Following the completion of pan-India validation, Garbhini-GA2 will be implemented in clinics throughout the country. The Ministry of Science and Technology's Department of Biotechnology provided financing for the research, with additional support from the Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (IIT Madras) and the Centre for Integrative Biology and Systems Medicine (IIT Madras).
In order to support healthy aging, constructive lifestyle modifications, and psycho-social wellbeing, Wipro and the Centre for Brain Research at IISc partnered in May 2024 to create an AI-based personal care engine that will consider a person's past medical history, desired health state, and behavioral responses to offer personalized help with chronic disease prevention and treatment. Researchers from St. John's Hospital and IIIT-B are focusing on using computer vision for early detection of autism.
In an effort to improve road safety and decrease fatalities by half, Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari inaugurated Intelligent Solutions for Road Safety through Technology and Engineering (iRASTE) under Mission Zero on September 11, 2021. The pilot project will run for two years in Nagpur. Intel, International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, Central Road Research Institute, Mahindra & Mahindra, and Nagpur Municipal Corporation are part of the pilot project. It is focusing on vehicle safety, mobility analysis, and infrastructure safety.
To improve vehicle safety, NMC will outfit its fleet of vehicles with advanced driver-assistance systems and collision avoidance systems. They will also be equipped with sensors which will continuously monitor the road network's dynamic risks for mobility analysis, mapping the city into three zones: white (normal), grey (accident could happen), and black (accident has already happened). The data will be gathered by Intel AI Center at IIIT-H for monitoring and fixing the grey and black zones.
MINRO at IIIT-B is working on traffic analysis of Indian road conditions, analyzing traffic data, and using data for multimodal transport to make recommendations about the locations of rail transit and bus stations.
In 2021, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs introduced the first phase of MCA21 V3.0. It will allow for the electronic filing of documents under the corporate law and public access to corporate information. AI will be utilized by the platform to gather, organize, and classify stakeholder comments and inputs and produce analytical reports that will facilitate speedy policy choices.
As part of the Safe City initiative, 1,000 AI cameras with facial recognition were placed at a cost of ₹96 crore in Lucknow's commercial districts, colleges, hostels, large crossings, and public gathering spots. By integrating with the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System, the cameras will detect suspicious movement of individuals by comparing their faces to a police database, notify control rooms of any criminal activities, and send out alerts against illegal dumping. For a more responsive and linked security network, AI will be included into crisis hotlines and helplines.
In collaboration with the Indian government, IIIT-B created Datalake, a tool that analyzes government data on a range of projects to determine whether the objectives of the policy have been fulfilled and whether there is room for improvement. It can forecast how to modify the beneficiary structure to comply with the policy and benefit the citizens.
The Government of Uttar Pradesh used facial recognition and AI-powered crowd density monitoring, RFID wristbands as part of the security setup for the 2025 Prayag Maha Kumbh Mela. Plans to establish India's first AI lab aimed at strengthening cyber surveillance operations against deepfake threats and the country’s first tea auction driven by blockchain and AI, were announced by the Assam government in the state budget for 2025–2026. It will focus on real-time online threat detection, digital forensics, and cybersecurity. The lab will track cyberthreats, and assess misleading media.
Wadhwani AI, a $30 million nonprofit research institute, was established in 2018 by Romesh Wadhwani and Sunil Wadhwani with the goal of enhancing the lives of the world's poorest 2 billion people. New York University, the University of Southern California, India Institutes of Technology, and University of Mumbai will collaborate with the institute. The objective is to have solutions that show how AI can help the underprivileged, and then to build on those initial instances. Wadhwani AI will support universities from developing nations in expanding their AI capabilities.
The following is a list of notable AI companies of India, along with their corporate headquarters location.
In order to determine whether to create an AI Safety Institute (AISI) that can establish standards, frameworks, and guidelines for AI development without serving as a regulatory body or stifling innovation, MeitY conducted consultation process with Meta Platforms, Google, Microsoft, IBM, OpenAI, NASSCOM, Broadband India Forum, Software Alliance, Indian Institutes of Technology, The Quantum Hub, Digital Empowerment Foundation, and Access Now on 7 October 2024. It was decided that instead of focusing on regulation, the AISI would focus on damage detection, risk identification, and standards setting for which interoperable systems are necessary to prevent the development of silos which may eventually influence future policies. The Safe and Trusted Pillar of the IndiaAI Mission has been allocated ₹20 crore, which the AISI may use for the inaugural budget. More money from the IndiaAI Mission's other verticals may be used in the future.
In order to develop an AI policy report tailored to India and assess the country's AI ecosystem's strengths and future prospects, UNESCO and MeitY began consulting on AI Readiness Assessment Methodology under Safety and Ethics in Artificial Intelligence from 2024. It is to encourage the ethical and responsible use of AI in industries. The study will help find areas where government can become involved, especially in attempts to strengthen institutional and regulatory capabilities.
Minister for Electronics & Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw announced the creation of an IndiaAI Safety Institute on January 30, 2025, to ensure the ethical and safe application of AI models. The institute will promote domestic research and development that is grounded in India's social, economic, cultural, and linguistic diversity and is based on Indian datasets. With the help of academic and research institutions, as well as private sector partners, the institute will follow the hub-and-spoke approach to carry out projects within Safe and Trusted Pillar of the IndiaAI Mission. Among the major safety-related initiatives are eight ongoing projects to implement a techno-legal strategy to protect data privacy while conducting an ethical audit of algorithmic effectiveness.
First round of projects are as follows:
Themes for second round of projects include watermarking and labelling, ethical AI frameworks, AI risk-assessment and management, stress testing tools, and deepfake detection tools.
Infosys released an open-source "Responsible AI" toolbox on February 26, 2025. The program, is a component of the Infosys Topaz Responsible AI Suite. It assists in identifying and stopping security risks, privacy violations, biased outputs, damaging content, copyright infringement, false information, deepfakes, and the use of malevolent AI. The toolkit can improve the transparency of outcomes produced by AI. It works with both on-premises and cloud systems. Citing concerns about the confidentiality of government data and documents, the Ministry of Finance issued an internal department caution advising staff not to use AI tools like ChatGPT and DeepSeek for work-related purposes.