NASSCOM launches Generative AI foundry programme
Here is your daily dose of key developments from the technology world of India.
NASSCOM’s Generative AI Foundry programme
NASSCOM has launched Generative AI Foundry programme with the aim to help tech startups in the AI domain and build India’s niche in the global Generative AI startup landscape. As part of this programme, it has selected 26 startups.
The Generative AI Foundry programme is done through partnerships with more than 30 organisations from the industry and the investor community.
Some of the partners include Anthill Ventures, Broadridge, Capgemini, Centific, Chiratae Ventures, Cigniti, eClerx, Endiya Partners, GitHub, Jio GenNext, MathWorks, Microsoft, Pavestone VC, Premji Invest, Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore (SRI-B), Silverneedle Ventures, Sutherland, and _VOIS (Vodafone Intelligent Solutions).
Select investor partners have pledged their commitment by investing up to $25 million in the most promising startups. Moreover, investors will extend support in various forms, catalysing growth and innovation.
The average startup in the cohort is two years old and has already raised $500,000 from institutional investors. The startups offer solutions that generate text, audio, code, video/image, and multimodal output with strong use cases for retail, media and entertainment, banking and financial services, and various functions of the enterprise.
Amdocs partners with Bharti Airtel for digital initiatives
Amdocs, a global software and services company focused on the communications and media segment, will collaborate with Bharti Airtel to drive 5G and IoT monetisation and enhance its end-user customer experience.
Amdocs will create a digital platform to automate and digitise Airtel’s business operations and help the telecom operator create a single-bundled plan and bill for all its services thereby enhancing customer satisfaction.
According to a statement, once implemented, the platform will help customers of Airtel Black—its offering that combines all accounts into a single Airtel plan—create their own plan across multiple Airtel offerings, such as mobile, broadband and direct-to-home.
This transition will help Airtel offer a unified customer experience, enhance billing accuracy as well as optimise business operations with seamless ecosystem integration and real-time insights, facilitating informed decision-making.
Airtel Payments Bank to expand banking points, enhance product range: CEO Anubrata Biswas
Cognizant,Vianai Systems partner for GenAI
Cognizant and Vianai Systems launched a global strategic go-to-market partnership to accelerate human-centred generative AI offerings. The partnership leverages Vianai's hila Enterprise platform alongside Cognizant's Neuro AI, creating a unified interface to unlock predictive, AI-driven decision-making. For both companies, this partnership is expected to enable growth opportunities in their respective customer bases, and through Cognizant's plans to resell Vianai solutions.
Vianai's hila Enterprise provides clients with a platform to safely and reliably deploy any large language model (LLM), optimized and fine-tuned to speak to their systems of record—both structured and unstructured data, enabling clients to better analyse, discover, and explore their data leveraging the conversational power of generative AI.
In addition, the LLM monitoring capabilities within hila Enterprise is a next-generation monitoring platform for AI-driven enterprises, which monitors and analyses LLM performance to proactively uncover opportunities to continually improve the reliability and trustworthiness of LLMs for clients.
Wadhwani AI receives $3.3M grant from Google.org
Wadhwani AI will receive $3.3 million in grant funding under the AI for the Global Goals challenge by Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm to scale AI technology currently advising farmers on pest management for cotton crops, to now also protect India’s staple food crops, integrating it into the digital systems of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare for nationwide reach.
Wadhwani AI’s solution, currently manifest in the Cotton Ace app that has helped improve crop productivity and farmer incomes across the country, uses pictures uploaded by farmers to identify pests and provide data-driven solutions to address crop damage, while also providing them up-to-date information on weather, farming methods, and crop prices.
Wadhwani AI is one of 15 organisations worldwide to receive support through the $25 million philanthropy challenge by Google.org for projects that use artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Edited by Kanishk Singh
