AI100, an initiative by YourStory and AWS, aims to unlock India’s AI potential

Artificial intelligence has taken centre stage in India, with numerous startups and founders focusing on groundbreaking innovations. The Government of India is offering attractive incentives for companies to build AI capabilities for India and the world. In the midst of this progress, Amazon Web Services (AWS) India aims to propel India’s AI capabilities to greater heights with the AI100 initiative, an initiative by YourStory and AWS.

AI100 will give AWS customers a platform to share their success stories, and illuminate how AWS has provided them a springboard to launch their businesses. 

The initiative will engage with leaders in the field through panel and roundtable discussions, as well as events held across the year. It will also feature curated content from pioneers in the space of AI.

Over the course of the year, the initiative will recognise AI innovations that have solved critical issues, paved new paths for AI, created wide-scale social impact and strengthened the ethical foundations of the industry. It will share compelling stories of companies that have founded and scaled businesses on AWS AI infrastructure. Finally, a coffee table book and a whitepaper will be released as a part of this initiative.

Great minds, innovate alike: AI100 leaders

For the last quarter of a century, Amazon has leveraged the power of AI for its ecommerce business. AWS then harnessed this transformative force, making it more accessible to builders, data scientists, businesses and innovators. With a comprehensive and powerful set of AI services, resources and tools, AWS has enabled over 100,000 businesses to unlock the value of their data and unleash innovation. Now, it is focused on recognising the advancements made in the field.

AI100 will shortlist and select 100 AI leaders in India. They will be shortlisted on the basis of industry impact, vision for the future of AI, their technological reputation, the scale and complexity of their solutions, contributions via research publications and forums, responsible use of AI and customer impact.

“Innovation springs from intricate interconnections, and nowhere is this truth more reflective than in the field of AI. Just as the AI algorithm learns, adapts and makes decisions, so too will a truly interconnected AI ecosystem. Just as the AI algorithm evolves and upskills, so too will the AI ecosystem. By strengthening the AI ecosystem and community — its leadership, ethics, talent and objectives — initiatives like AWS AI100 will enable us to create better, smarter and more responsible systems that will help rewrite the Indian AI story” said Biswajit Das, Head - Data and AI - AWS India & SAARC.

While AWS is celebrating present-day achievements in artificial intelligence, it is simultaneously pushing the boundaries and widening the capabilities of what AI and Generative AI can do moving forward.

Building the foundation of AI ecosystem with Bedrock

Amazon Bedrock - a fully managed service launched in April 2023 - enables companies to build and scale Generative AI applications with foundation models. Globally, Amazon Bedrock has empowered companies like Adidas, Booking.com, GoDaddy, Lonely Planet, Salesforce and others to develop Generative AI solutions and services that create realistic images, enable their clients to set up businesses effectively, combat financial crimes, offer travel recommendations and more.

Leading the change in India

Amazon Bedrock has empowered a wide range of AWS India customers in healthcare to make a difference, with their solutions and services. Eka.Care, a Personal Health Record (PHR) application, has leveraged Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Sagemaker and Amazon Textract to great effect, creating HealthBot, a medically aware, mobile-based patient app, that users can interact with to receive answers about their medical reports. Healthify, a health and wellness service provider, began using Amazon Bedrock in 2023 to deploy a conversational intelligence solution. Known as the Call Analytics solution, it could extract key insights from audio calls in a range of Indian languages through autonomous emotion and sentiment analysis. With 1,600 calls transcribed every month, Healthify’s coaches were able to use the transcripted summaries to provide superior customer service. The company estimates that the Amazon Bedrock-powered Call Analytics solution will provide up to a 75% increase in their coaches’ abilities to accommodate clients.

Similarly, Amazon Bedrock is shifting the foundation of the IT services industry. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a Generative AI Competency Partner, has launched an AWS Generative AI practice, which aids enterprises to choose and quickly scale the right solutions for their unique business needs. Shellkode, AWS’s partner and a leading IT solutions firm, has used AWS to create purpose-built solutions, which harness Generative AI capabilities. These solutions include a negotiation assistant, invoice management, an email assistant that provides multilingual support, customer interaction analysis and smart assistant. With the availability of Bedrock in Mumbai, Shellkode is planning to help customers unleash the power of Generative AI, thereby maximising their business process capabilities.

It’s a great time to be a part of the growth story of AI in India. Enterprises are harnessing the might of AI, to explore, innovate and stretch the boundaries of this transformative technology. AWS is honouring this enterprising spirit and highlighting their impact through the AWS AI100 initiative. It will nurture talent and build a collaborative AI ecosystem that will create a new wave of innovation to take India into the future.