Lok Sabha Question No. 42 (STARRED), answered on 2025-07-23
Subject: India AI Mission
Ministry: ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Asked by: Ms. Bansuri Swaraj, Shri Balabhadra Majhi

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA

## MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LOK SABHA STARRED QUESTION NO. *42

TO BE ANSWERED ON: 23.07.2025

## INDIA AI MISSION

## †*42: SHRI BALABHADRA MAJHI:

## MS. BANSURI SWARAJ:

Will the Minister of ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGYbe pleased to state:

- a) the objectives and current status of the India AI Mission
- b) the total compute capacity under the India AI Mission along with the number of GPUs added and the manner in which this infrastructure supports AI innovation;
- c) the purpose and progress of the AIKosha platform including the number of datasets currently hosted and the manner in which it contributes to developing indigenous AI solutions;
- d) the number and nature of proposals received under the India AI Foundation Model initiative along with the names of sectors targeted by selected startups; and
- e) the  key  outcomes  of  the  India  AI  I4C  CyberGuard,  AI  Hackathon  including  participation figures, winning teams and its role in advancing Al-driven cybersecurity?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER FOR ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI ASHWINI VAISHNAW)

- (a) to (e):  A Statement is laid on the Table of the House.

## STATEMENT REFERRED TO IN THE REPLY TO LOK SABHA STARRED QUESTION NO. *42 FOR 23.07.2025 REGARDING 'INDIA AI MISSION'.

……..

India's  AI  strategy  is  based  on  the  Hon'ble  Prime  Minister's  vision  to  democratize  the  use  of technology.  It  aims  to  address  India  centric  challenges,  create  economic  and  employment opportunities for all Indians.

## AI ecosystem in India at present:

India has a strong information technology ecosystem. It generates annual revenues of more than 250 billion dollars and provides employment to more than 6 million people.

Global rankings such as Stanford AI rankings place India among the top countries in AI skills, capabilities,  and  policies  to  use  AI.  India  is  also  the  second-largest  contributor  to  GitHub  AI projects, showcasing its vibrant developer community.

## India's AI strategy:

India's AI strategy aims to position India as a global leader in artificial intelligence. Government launched  IndiaAI  mission  in  March  2024.It  is  a  strategic  initiative  to  establish  a  robust  and inclusive AI ecosystem aligned with India's development goals.

Seven pillars of AI mission are as follows:

## 1. IndiaAI Compute pillar

- To provide high-end compute power (GPUs) to Indian start-ups and academia at an affordable cost.
- As on date, 34,381 GPUs have been onboarded from 14 empanelled service providers.
- Government of India provides these GPUs at a subsidized cost. The average rate for these GPUs is about Rs 65 per GPU per hour. The price of H100 GPUs, widely used for foundational model training, is Rs 92 per GPU per hour which is significantly lower than the commercial hyperscaler cloud providers.

## 2. IndiaAI Application Development Initiative

- This pillar aims to develop AI applications for India specific challenges in sectors such as climate change and disaster management, healthcare, agriculture, governance, and assistive technologies for learning disabilities.
- As on date, 30 (thirty) applications have approved.
- In  addition,  sector-specific  hackathons  have  been  organized  in  partnership  with  other ministries and government institutions.
- Example: IndiaAI launched the CyberGuard AI Hackathon in collaboration with the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) under Ministry of Home Affairs to develop AI-driven solutions for cybersecurity.

## 3. AIKosh-

- To develop large datasets for training AI models.
- AIKosh is a unified data platform integrating datasets from government and non-government sources.
- The beta version launched in March 2025 currently features over 890 datasets, 208 AI models, and more than 13 development toolkits.
- These resources serve as building blocks for developers, allowing them to focus on core AI functionality instead of recreating modules.
- Example: A team working on agriculture AI solutions can use the Kisan Call Center datasets, which contains over 40 million farmer queries. This helps them to build and improve their model.
- The platform has attracted over 265,000 visits, 6,000 registered users, and 13,000+ resource downloads.

## 4. IndiaAI Foundation Models

- To develop India's own Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) trained on Indian datasets and languages.
- This is to to ensure sovereign capability and global competitiveness in generative AI.
- India AI Mission received more than 500 proposals. In the first phase, 4 start-ups have been selected. They include Sarvam AI, Soket AI, Gnani AI and Gan AI.

## 5. IndiaAI FutureSkills

- To develop AI skilled professionals  in  India  by  increasing  the  number  of  graduates,  postgraduate and PhDs in AI domain. Support is provided to:
- o 500 PhD fellows
- o 5,000 post graduates
- o 8,000 undergraduates
- Over  200  students  have  received  fellowships  in  the  first  year,  with  26  partner  institutes onboarding PhD students.
- It also envisions setting up Data and AI Labs in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities across India.
- IndiaAI in collaboration with NIELIT has identified 27 data labs in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities across the country.
- Additionally, State/UTs have nominated 174 ITIs and polytechnics for setting up IndiaAI data labs.

## 6. IndiaAI Startup Financing

- To provide financial assistance to AI start-ups.
- IndiaAI Startups Global program was launched in March 2025 in collaboration with Station F (Paris)  and  HEC  Paris.  10  Indian  AI  startups  are  getting  assistance  in  expanding  into  the European market.

## 7. Safe & Trusted AI

- To balance innovation with strong governance frameworks to ensure responsible AI adoption.
- In the first round, 8 projects have been selected addressing issues like machine unlearning, bias mitigation, privacy-preserving machine learning, explainability, auditing tools, and governance testing framework.
- More than 400 applications have been received in the second round.
- An expression of interest was published on 09 th May 2025 for onboarding partner institutions for setting up the IndiaAI Safety Institute.

Shaping global debate on AI:

- India is actively participating in shaping global debate on development, usage and safety of AI.
- India was the founder chair of Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI).
- India was able to carve out consensus on AI during the G20 communique.
- India is poised to host the AI Impact Summit in February 2026. It will bring governments, international institutions, start-ups, private sector companies and academia on one platform.

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