As the year 2017 comes to an end, here we list all the interesting and no-to-missed developments in the space of AI and analytics in India. While analytics has been making a head way in Indian industries over the past few years, what is interesting note is that over a span of one year, the industry has witnessed immense adoption of what many term the wave of fourth industrial revolution—artificial intelligence. From startups emerging in the space of AI to companies adopting robust technologies like chatbot, the year 2017 saw many interesting developments in the space. The industry also witnessed funding and investment, acquisitions, appointments, launch of analytics center and much more. Here’s a flashback of the biggest developments in the year 2017.
Funding and Investment
March:
PipeCandy receives a seed round funding: Data science startup received $1.1 million in a recent seed funding round organized by IDG Ventures India, Axilor Ventures, Silicon Valley based Emergent Ventures, Indian Angel Network, and other individual founders.
April:
Impress.ai gets invested by ‘Javelin Startup-O Victory Fund’: An automated platform for screening and assessing candidates with an AI powered chat interference, it has received an undisclosed amount of funding from the Javelin Startup-O Victory Fund, which is managed out of Singapore.
Squad bags $2.1m in a recent funding round: Squad, a Delhi-based work automation startup recently snapped up a sum of $2.1 million as part of a funding round. Blume Ventures, Contrarian Capital, and Axilor Ventures, among others took part in the funding round.
Paytm invests in startup QorQl: Paytm has invested an undisclosed amount on the Noida-based online healthcare startup QorQl, that uses AI and big data extensively.
Bangalore startup DataWeave raises an undisclosed Funding: Japan-based ad-tech company FreakOut Group led a funding round, where business intelligence startup DataWeave raised an undisclosed amount as a part of the Series A funding round.
Absentia gets INR 8 crore from Exfinity Venture and others: Bangalore-headquartered AI startup Absentia has bagged INR 8 crores in a pre-series A round of funding from Exfinity Venture Partners, former Infosys executives V Balakrishnan and Mohandas Pai, Deepak Ghaisas and Girish Paranjpe
Innefu Labs secures $2 million Fund: Delhi-based AI startup Innefu Labs raised USD 2 million in funding from IndiaNivesh Venture Capital Fund. The series A funding will see the investors picking up a minority stake in the company.
May:
Vidooly raises 1.4 million in funding: Noida-based video analytics startup Vidooly raised INR 8.9 crore series A funding from GVFL and Times Internet. The startup will plow this funding for product engineering, marketing, and augmenting the sales and distribution channels.
Breast cancer screening startup receives seed funding: Niramai, a Bangalore-based startup, announced a seed funding round led by Pi Ventures. The round additionally witnessed participation from Axilor Ventures, 500 Startups, Ankur Capital, and Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal
Flytxt raises Rs 70 crore: Netherlands-based Flytxt customer data analytics Software Company announced that it has aised Rs.70 crore funding from DAH Beteiligungs GmbH. Flytxt plans to invest new funds in R&D.
World Bank’s IFC invests in pi Ventures’ maiden fund: International Finance Corporation (IFC), a part of the World Bank Group, has invested US $3mn in pi Ventures’ maiden fund, India’s first Applied Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Internet of Things (IoT) focused early stage venture fund.
June:
Julia Computing secures 4.6M in seed funding: Julia computing bagged $4.6M in Seed Funding from General Catalyst and Founder Collective investors. Julia was born out of the open source community. The language has a huge developer base and is known for its speed, capacity and productivity.
Unbxd raises $12.5 million funding: Product discovery and analytics service provider Unbxd raised 12.5 million dollars in Series C funding led by Eight Roads Ventures, the proprietary investment arm of Fidelity International Limited, and from existing investors including IDG Ventures, Inventus Capital Partners and Nirvana Ventures.
AI startup Boxx.ai raises $500K: Unicorn India Ventures invested in Bangalore-based artificial intelligence startup Boxx.ai. The startup founded by Ajay Kashyap, Prakhar Raj and Shitiz Bansal uses artificial intelligence to democratize analytics and recently launched their product AIDA. The startup has raised $500K funding led by Unicorn India Ventures.
Niki.ai receives a $2M Series A funding: The firm received a major $2 million Series A funding from San Francisco-based SAP.iO, and existing investor Unilazer Ventures.
Quantta Analytics raises an undisclosed amount of funding: Data analytics startup Quantta Analytics secured an undisclosed amount of funding in the Pre-Series A round. The funding was aimed to be used to strengthen the core technology team and set up a centre in San Francisco.
FORMCEPT secured an undisclosed Series A funding: The firm raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from GVFL Limited. FORMCEPT is a unified data analysis platform that helps enterprises get actionable insights from their data faster.
July:
Bottr.me gets funded by 500 Startups and others: 500 startups (an early-stage venture fund and seed accelerator), Purvi Capital, Rajan Anandan (Vice President, Southeast Asia and India, Google) and Abhishek Gupta from TLabs invested an undisclosed amount on Bottr, that allows the users to create an AI based virtual avatar.
Mobikon Secures $7 Million Funding: Mobikon, a noted customer engagement and analytics platform for hospitality industry raised $7 million in its third round of institutional funding. The three lead investors are Sistema Asia Fund, C31 Ventures and Qualgro.
August:
Credit Suisse’s NEXT Investors Backs Pune-Based Sapience Analytics: Pune-based Sapience Analytics, an innovative People Analytics solution company, received a majority investment from Credit Suisse Asset Management’s NEXT Investors.
September:
AI Driven Healthcare Startup Mfine Secures Seed Funding: India’s first artificial intelligence-driven healthcare network, has raised Rs 9.5 crore ($1.5 million) in its seed funding round from Stellaris Venture Partners. The funding will be used by the Bengaluru-based startup for product development.
CreditVidya Raises $5M In Series-B Funding: Mumbai-based InfoCredit Services Pvt. Ltd, which operates credit scoring platform CreditVidya, raised $5 million (Rs 32 crore) by Matrix Partners.
October:
Multipoint Capital Invests $2 Million ParellelDots: ParallelDots, a Gurugram-based AI and deep learning startup secured a funding of $2 million from US-based investment firm Multipoint Capital.
ThirdWatch Raises Angel Funding: Artificial Intelligence-powered fraud prevention startup ThirdWatch raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding from Indian Angel Network.
Ola Raises $1.1B In Funding: It has raised $1.1 billion from China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd and existing investor SoftBank Group Corp. of Japan. Ola plans to make strategic investments in its supply chain and technology, while also making significant investments in technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning
November:
Qubole Raises $25 Million: The company raised $25 million in strategic round of funding led by Singtel Innov8 and Harmony Partners with participation from existing investors Charles River Ventures (CRV), Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Institutional Venture Partners (IVP).
Big Data Startup Crayon gets funded: Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan has invested an undisclosed amount in the Singapore and Chennai-based Big Data company Crayon Data. The investment was a part of Crayon Data’s Series A2 round of funding.
EdGE Networks Gets Funded By Kalaari Capital and Ventureast: It secured a $4.5 million in Series A funding led by Kalaari Capital with Ventureast as co-investor. The company intends to use the capital to build upon its early success in the HR technology space
WiFi Analytics Startup i2e1 Raises $3 Million: Delhi-based WiFi analytics startup i2e1 has raised $3 million in Series A funding led by impact investment firm Omidyar Network. Some of organisation’s existing investors, Auxano Ventures and 3one4 Capital (a company backed by Mohandas Pai), participated in the round.
Active.Ai raises $8.25 million: Active.ai, a Singapore based fintech startup with an innovation lab in Bengaluru, has raised $8.25 million in a Series A funding round co-led by Vertex Ventures, Creditease Holdings and Dream Incubator.
AI Crowdsourcing Platform Playment Raises $1.6 Million: Bengaluru-based AI-driven mobile crowdsourcing platform Playment raised $1.6 million as part of its Pre-Series A funding from Y-Combinator, Sparkland Capital, and angels such as Ryan Petersen, Max Altman, David Petersen and others.
December:
Cisco’s John Chambers buys 10% stake in Uniphore: 10 percent of Chennai-based speech analytics firm Uniphore Software Systems’ shares have been picked up by the US India Business Council (USIBC). Uniphore’s speech analytics product “auMina” and virtual assistant product “akeira” are attracting attention and winning customers in all across the globe.
Management Appointments
March:
Fractal Analytics hires Sameer Dhanrajani as Chief Strategy Officer: The 2000 founded company hired Dhanrajani to drive strategic investments and lead the charge of high-priority growth initiatives and enable clients on AI-led transformation of their businesses.
FM plans to hire professionals to support development of big data architecture: In an attempt to push the development of big data architecture within the country, Indian Finance Ministry announced hiring 120 IT professionals.
July:
John Irudayaraj appointed as Managing Partner of Rinalytics Advisors: A talent search firm focused on Analytics and Data Science, Rinalytics announced the appointment of Mr. John Irudayaraj as the Managing Partner, where he would be spearheading Rinalytics Advisors.
October:
Deep Thomas joins Aditya Birla Group: Aditya Birla Group hired Deep Thomas, a former Tata Group executive, as its chief data and analytics officer, where he would be responsible to create a group-wide customer database supporting the diversified conglomerate products and sales strategy.
Deepinder Dhingra moves to Noodle.ai: Former Mu Sigma Executive, Dhingra was appointed as the chief product officer of Noodle.ai, where he would lead a world-class team of data scientists, data engineers, software engineers, supercomputing technologists, and product managers to extend Noodle.ai’s position as the leader in Enterprise Artificial Intelligence applications.
Nitin Seth Joins Data Analytics Firm Incedo as CEO: He was appointed with an aim of building on Incedo’s strong list of clients, deepen its commitment to drive innovation in emerging technologies and lead Incedo in its next phase of growth.
Acquisition
January:
Arvato acquires Ramyam: Arvato CRM solutions acquired India-based IT and analytics company Ramyam Intelligence Lab Pvt. Ltd in a multi-million Euros deal
March:
Verisk Analytics acquires Fintellix: With a plan to expand its expertise in the data solutions arena, Verisk laid out its plans of acquiring India-based Fintellix.
June:
Happiest Minds acquires U.S. based OSSCube: Bangalore based Happiest Minds announced the acquisition of OSSCube, a U.S. based digital transformation company, with an aim to expand the company’s portfolio of transformative offerings in the consulting-led digital space.
Fractal Analytics completes acquisition of 4i Inc.: The prior completed acquisition of 4i Inc., a Chicago-based firm, to improve analytics and AI and expand its growth strategy consulting capabilities
July:
Google acquires Halli Labs: Google acquired the Bangalore based AI startup Halli Labs for an undisclosed amount. This former Stayzilla CTO led company was founded with a deep belief around artificial intelligence, machine learning and NLP.
Emids acquires Encore Health: emids, a healthcare IT leader and data & analytics solution provider announced the acquisition of Encore Health Resources, to have an increased ability to serve the needs of providers, and offer more holistic solutions to payers and technology partners.
August:
Freshworks acquires web analytics startup Zarget: Seven-year old enterprise software firm Freshworks on Monday acquired Zarget, a startup that specialises in Software as a Service (SaaS). The deal, valued at around $15-18 million, marks the entry of Freshworks into the automation marketing business, and a step towards becoming a multi product company.
September:
HCL Tech acquires ETL Factory: ETL Factory, which operates as Datawave, was bought by HCL Technology for approximately over Rs. 58 crore. The amount included contingent payments subject to certain financial milestones.
November:
Crisil announces acquisition of Pragmatix: Crisil, one of India’s noted providers of ratings, data, research, analytics and solutions signed a definitive agreement to acquire Pragmatix Services Private Limited for ₹56 crore.
Phonon Communications acquires iDelivr: Phonon, a company in the field of automated customer interaction solutions announced the acquisition of artificial intelligence chatbot company iDelivr, a Gurgaon based startup.
Collaboration and Partnership
January:
Agreement signed with Innefu to prevent warfare: The startup will utilize AI to analyze data fed by Indian intelligence agencies to identify patterns from the past and predict future outcomes and save the country from Cyber warfare.
March:
Hotstar and Zapr tie-up: Hotstar, one of the leading digital streaming platforms in India partneres with Zapr Media Lab to create a better understanding of the mobile audience that can further be used by brands for personalized communication.
YES Bank enters into a deal with Payjo: The latter will provide the financial institution with the first AI-driven bot for a wallet. This step will complement the firm’s already trusted and popular YES Pay wallet service with over half-a-million users.
April:
Aureus Analytics inks multi-year analytics deal with Landmark Insurance Broker: As part of the deal, Aureus Analytics will help Landmark Insurance Broker improve their end customer experience by leveraging data analytics and machine learning.
July:
India & Israel collaborate on AI: The historic visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Israel got the two countries talking over various important issues—artificial intelligence being one of it.
September:
Flipkart and Microsoft collaborate: E-commerce giant Flipkart is working with Microsoft to start using artificial intelligence and machine learning-based solutions to make future sales.
November:
Ola Partners With Microsoft: Ola joined hands with tech giant Microsoft to build a connected vehicle platform. This partnership would help Ola access their cloud infrastructure, artificial intelligence and productivity tools to improve passenger experience and enable predictive maintenance of vehicles.
Airtel partners with Amdocs: the partnership is aimed at introducing AI based services to its customer.
Analytics adoption and launches
January:
Boeing unveils analytics focused center in Bengaluru: Boeing, the world’s biggest aerospace company unveiled its engineering & technology centre in Bengaluru, with the aim to make the most of material sciences, flight sciences and data analytics.
February:
RBI’s adopts blockchain technology: In a first, RBI’s research arm, Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) completed the first ever end-to-end test of the technology behind Bitcoin, boosting its application in banking and financial sectors.
Aureus Analytics launches CRUX: A first of its kind comprehensive Data Analytics platform, CRUX has been designed specifically for insurers to deliver better customer experience. With CRUX, business and analytics users can capture data from multiple sources, both internal and external to the insurer, to create a single source of truth.
Amazon Web Services adds AI to cloud: AWS India added more teeth with an AI-first approach by adding services such as image analysis, visual search, speech recognition among others on its infrastructure for developers and enterprises to build products.
April:
GroupM’s Essence sets up global analytics hub in India: Essence that represents GroupM’s global digital agency indicated its plan to focus on campaign analytics for global clients with the announcement of the launch of Global Analytics Hub in New Delhi. It will also work in mobile analytics, machine learning, social data mining, and customer analytics.
Hortonworks debuts new office in Bangalore: Hortonworks headquartered in Santa Clara unveiled their expanded office in Bangalore. The new premise is keeping in line with the company’s goal to plow more investment in international markets in 2017 and drive more usage of its Connected Data Platforms and new solutions.
May:
Paytm unveils Payments Bank with data science at the core: Paytm Payments Bank kick-started a new kind of banking model. To spruce up for the smooth rollout of Paytm Payments bank, the mobile wallet company appointed Amit Singhal, a Google veteran and former head of Google Search.
June:
Infosys’ changes Mana to “Nia”: In a wake of protest by the German software behemoth SAP, Infosys pulled out the name of it ambitious AI platform Mana to Nia. It sounded very similar to SAP’s in memory database platform—Hana.
NEC Corporation set a foot in India’s big data and analytics market: Japan-based NEC Corporation made a move to strengthen its foothold in India’s big data analytics market. It made an announcement of investing 10 million to set up an analytics centre in Noida.
July:
WISeKey launches AI and Blockchain CoE in India: The company announced the launch of an Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain Centre of Excellence in India to support its global projects and appointmented Bikramaditya Singhal as head of the AI and Blockchain practice in India.
August:
IIT Madras signs MoU with Robert Bosch: Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions (RBEI) signed an MoU with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT M) to set up the Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (RBC-DSAI).
Qlik Expands its ‘Academic Program’ in India: Data analytics company Qlik announced the expansion of the Qlik academic program to cover 50 education institutions across 25 cities in India.
IBM Opens its first machine learning hub in Bengaluru: Software giant IBM opened up its first machine learning hub in India. The hub, located in Bengaluru, is a physical space for organisations to visit for hands-on training on ML.
PayPal’s launches AI and ML innovation labs: PayPal, a global leader in offering digital payment platforms recently announced the launch of Technology Innovation Labs in India. Based out of the PayPal’s tech centers in Bangalore and Chennai, it would focus primarily on productivity, innovation, and education around the currently trending technologies.
Amazon Echo announced official launch in India: Amazon reportedly made its mind to launch Alexa-enabled smart speaker Echo and its smaller version Echo Dot, to boost up home automation space in the country.
Host Analytics expands R&D resence in India: Host Analytics announced that it plans to expand its R&D bases in India at Hyderabad. They would also be investing $25 million in the R&D Center and scale up its engineering workforce over the next three years.
September:
Google Bets big on AI and ML with Cloud India Region: Technology giant Google announced setting up its first cloud region (data centre) in Mumbai within this year. With the Google Cloud India Region going live, enterprises in India will soon be able to take advantage of the high speeds, low latency and performance benefits uniquely offered by Google Cloud Platform services.
India’s first multi-faceted AI and robotics center to be launched: India’s first multi-faceted artificial intelligence and robotics centre will be set up in Bengaluru which will be set up at the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) campus in Bengaluru and the state government had earmarked an initial grant of Rs 5 crore for the purpose.
October:
Indian cops plan on using big data to prevent crimes: The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) is trying to use crime data analytics software to enable predictive policing so that crime can be stopped even before it takes place.
November:
Hitachi Introduces data-driven solutions firm Vantara: Japanese tech major Hitachi Ltd on introduced Hitachi Vantara in India which is set to deliver data-driven solutions for commercial and industrial enterprises. It will help enterprises by bringing new data-driven solutions and services to the market.
December:
US-Based Planet Labs Inc. sets up development centre in India: A US-based integrated aerospace and Data Analytics company Planet Labs Inc is set to open a development centre in India. One of their key motivators was to tap into the technical expertise as well as explore the business opportunities.
Flipkart introduces new internal AI Unit: In a move to strengthen its efforts towards furthering its interest in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Flipkart has created a new internal unit devoted to AI. The unit called AIforIndia, will be headed by Chief Data Scientist Mayur Datar.
Alibaba cloud comes to India: Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is set to enter the Indian market with its cloud-computing arm, Alibaba Cloud. The group’s entry in Asia’s second-largest country will accelerate the growth this sector.
Mumbai University sets up Institute for AI: Mumbai University’s Vidyanagari campus is set to get a brand new research and educational institute for Artificial Intelligence. The first-of-its-kind centre aims at finding solutions to social challenges by using modern techniques such as artificial intelligence and data science, among others.
AI, Machine Learning, Chatbot and other tech
February:
Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas adopts AI, becomes first: In India, a leading full service law firm, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas showed interest in adopting artificial intelligence to help the firm enhance its delivery model.
March:
HDFC launches of its AI-powered chatbot EVA: The bank launched an electronic virtual assistant (EVA) that uses artificial intelligence driven techniques to address customer issues.
Microsoft unveils desi chatbot Ruuh for India: The English speaking Microsoft chatbot is created for entertainment purpose only and is available to users in India. Seemingly aimed for the younger, mobile using demographic in India, the chatbot is available on Facebook messenger.
April:
Google brings Neural Machine Translation to nine Indian languages: The search giant brought Neural Machine Translation between English and nine widely used Indian languages — Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Punjabi, Malayalam and Kannada.
Accenture-led AI solutions drive Akshaya Patra’s Million Meals program: Accenture and famed NGO mid-day meal provider Akshaya Patra has teamed up to deploy disruptive technologies to significantly increase the number of mid-day meals served to children across schools in India using tech like AI, IoT, blockchain.
Tata Capital unveils AI based Chatbot: Tata Capital, the financial arm of Tata Group unveiled its Artificial Intelligence based chatbot which relies on natural language and cognitive learning capabilities to understand the queries and respond individually to each of these.
May:
Modi expects AI to dominate human life in future: Prime Minister Modi spoke about his opinion surrounding AI landscape during the launch of an integrated case management system for the Supreme Court, in New Delhi.
Candidates to take AI and big data questions in CFA exams from 2019: As of 2019, the exam would see new topics such as algorithmic and high-frequency trading along with the usual ones.
Karbonn launches new smartphone with an AI-based fashion app: The latest smartphones, called Karbonn Aura Note 2 integrates an artificial intelligence based solution. It comes with an app ‘Vistoso‘ that allows users to search for an outfit by simply clicking its picture. The AI engine of the app automatically recognizes the print, pattern and color of the outfit to give relevant results.
Google’s AI program for diabetic retinopathy in Indian: Google researchers had worked closely with doctors in India and the US to create a development dataset of 128,000 images which were each evaluated by 3-7 ophthalmologists from a panel of 54 ophthalmologists. This dataset was used to train a deep neural network to detect referable diabetic retinopathy.
July:
Ratan Tata expresses his fear for AI: The Chairman of Tata Group warned that AI technologies like robot can replace human intervention and hurt jobs in the coming future.
Infosys dabbles into Self Driving space: The company unveiled driverless, autonomous golf cart, built by the company’s Mysore based engineers.
August:
Vidooly’s ‘Brand Safety Tool’ keeps a check on prohibited content: The tool created by the in-house technology team at Vidooly, uses a combination of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Big data to examine every pixel of content because an advertise places their ads in the content.
Tamil Film ‘Mersal’ connects to its fans via AI-based Chatbot: Mersal partnered with ICONICbot, an Indo-Austrian company and launched Artificial Intelligence-based TSL ChatBot on Facebook Messenger to chat with fans.
Odisha teenager develops humanoid: This boy from Odisha’s Balasore district claimed to have successfully developed a humanoid robot, that, with its artificial intelligence algorithms can guard the border.
September:
Rahul Gandhi visits Silicon Valley to learn about AI: There were reports of Gandhi looking to “expand his thoughts about artificial intelligence” and implement it at the policy level in the Congress party’s vision documents.
SBI Introduces Chatbot SIA: India’s largest public sector lender State Bank of India, has introduced its own artificial intelligence powered chatbot, Sia which is currently undergoing beta testing. It is programmed to take care of customer queries and give out information on SBI’s wide range of products and services.
HDFC Bank’s ‘Eva’ becomes India’s largest, smartest chatbot: HDFC Bank’s artificial intelligence-based chatbot ‘Eva’ achieved the title of India’s largest chatbot, by successfully addressing over 2.7 million customer queries in just six months.
October:
Capillary Launches ‘VisitorMetrix’, AI-based visitor counter: It would maintain a visitor count and analyse customer behaviour in the shop floor. This could help in drastically improving the store efficiencies, conversions and campaign effectiveness.
IIT Madras develops algorithms that can ‘Learn Like Humans’: The researchers construct their own algorithms for complex tasks. The team trained the algorithm using “experts” that were basically programs that had mastered a method of playing the game AlphaGo.
24[7] Rechristened To [24]7.ai: To better reflect its leadership in leveraging artificial intelligence to dramatically improve customer experience, [24]7, changed its name to [24]7.ai.
December:
Indian Stock Exchanges desires to venture into AI, data analysis: They sought SEBI’s permission to engage in activities or businesses that are unrelated to, or not identical to, those of a stock exchange or of clearing corporations or their core business, through a separate legal entity.
Robot Mitra Greets VIPs On The Stage: Mitra, an indigenous robot developed by Bengaluru-based start-up, walked up to welcome Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Ivanka Trump at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) opening in Hyderabad on Tuesday.
Chennai Restaurant becomes India’s first to hire robots as waiters: A restaurant in Chennai has given India its very first robot-themed restaurant. The restaurant named ‘Robot’, which was formerly known as MOMO, is founded by Venkatesh Rajendran and Karthik Kannan.
Startup Accelerator Program
January:
Oracle and Airbus Bizlab pick Indian startups as part of accelerator program: Startups like Niyo Solutions, ExpertRec were selected as a part of the program. Besides being a part of Oracle Network, the startups were facilitated with Oracle’s pool of partners, customers, investor community and no-cost access to Oracle cloud services.
October:
Oracle Picks AI, IoT Based startups: The program for which the applications were invited in May 2017, selected a mix of companies using AI, predictive analytics, IoT, machine learning, chatbot and VR.
Government Initiatives
January:
Karnataka Education Department puts school on GIS map: To overcome the problem of unplanned distribution of schools across the state, Karnataka Education Department joined forces with Karnataka Government to put 76000 schools on GIS map.
Indian Railways embrace data analytics: With an aim to monetize the available data, Suresh Prabhu-led Indian Railways had stepped into the game of digitization and using data-centric approaches to benefit the railways.
June:
Government plans to have analytics tool to furnish airline price trends: Having analytics tools at place would provide travelers with future ticket price trends which would help in addressing the lingering concerns that travelers face because of steep fluctuation in airfares.
August:
Commerce Ministry sets up task force dedicated to AI: Nirmala Sitharaman lead ministry of Commerce and Industry constituted a task force to prepare for the industrial revolution 4.0 and the resulting economic transformation.
Kendriya Vidyalaya Sanghatan to use data capture & analytics: Close on the heels of the Central Government’s programmes such as ‘Make In India’ and ‘Start Up India’, the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sanghatan embraces “smart” technology to ensure all round development of children across the nation
September:
India forms policy group to study AI: NASSCOM announced that India has formed a policy group to study the new technologies and also recommend a framework for its adoption.
November:
Karnataka plans to launch CoE for AI and Data Science: The state announced investment of Rs. 40 crore to have India’s very own Silicon Valley within it with companies in AI and data science.
Government of Rajasthan implements big data environment: The Government of Rajasthan is announced working on providing a Big Data and Analytics environment to analyze state level data in order to enhance citizen services and engagement
December:
Government takes initiative to counter AI revolution in public sector: The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog), a policy think tank of the Indian Government, recently proposed that the country should be ready to tackle the side-effects of automation, particularly unemployment.
Others
July:
Coca Cola ceases analytics operations at Pune: As a part of restructuring, Coca Cola announced ceasing down its biggest analytics and technical innovation centers in India by December 2017.
Dhiraj Rajaram becomes largest stake-holder at MuSigma: MuSigma Chairman bought out a major chunk of shares owned by his former wife Ambiga Subramanian, putting to rest the rumors about company’s leadership.
September:
Modi asks tax officials to use data analytics to track undeclared wealth: It was believed that by scrutinizing data in this manner, it is would be easy for the government to find out tax evaders.
TomTom’s opened Centre Of Excellence at Pune: The company which inaugurated it latest Traffic Centre at its Centre of Excellence in Pune, aims at helping people make smarter decisions.
India and China held discussion for AI development: Leading Indian software firms such as HCL, Infosys, Wipro and Cognizant among others held discussions with Chinese hardware firms in China’s port city of Dalian for cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence.
November:
Ambiga Subramanian launches New Social Networking App: Ex MuSigma CEO, co-founded hyphen.social, new a social-networking application with a primary focus on increasing social engagement within the social network.
