Hyderabad: Create locally, deploy gobally, tech companies told

Hyderabad: Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on Friday organised 'Ai4ALL Conclave,' a virtual conference with the theme of 'Towards Building an AI-ready Organisation & Society.' It conference discussed on the opportunities provided by Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the industry, also deliberated on the latest trends, technologies, and solutions adopted for business competence. In his inaugural address, Neeraj Kumar, Director (National e-Governance Division), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, mentioned that the UMANG (Unified Mobile App for New Age Governance) application launched by Prime Minister 3 years ago brought 21,000 services under single app to nearly 2.5 crore citizens who have registered for them. He also mentioned that 60% withdrawals happened over UMANG mobile app during the Covid lockdown. The AI applications such as bots are quite helpful for citizen-centric services, he added.

Ramadevi, Director (Emerging Technologies), ITEC department, Telangana, said that the State government commemorated the year 2020 as the year of AI. She mentioned that the State government was working in partnership with industry, academia, civil society and other institutions in skilling and for capacity-building. She highlighted some of the key initiatives such as applied AI research center, AI-based agriculture projects.

Krishna Bodanapu, Chairman of CII-Telangana and MD of Cyient Ltd, observed that while technology presents better opportunities, it also poses challenges by taking away jobs. He mentioned that AI promises to generate productivity gains, improve well-being and help address global challenges, such as climate change, resource scarcity and health crises. There is a need to leverage these opportunities while developing skilled human resources.

CVD Ramprasad, Director-STPI, said that Artificial Intelligence is the top technology in Jiob Creations and highlighted the opportunities of AI in multiple industrial sectors. He said that these opportunities need to be leveraged by Indian IT companies and Startups and upgrade the technology at enterprise level. He mentioned that, "Startups and tech companies should focus on creating innovative products and thereby we should move towards Create Locally and Deploy Globally."

Prof Vijay Sai Vadlamudi, Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, said that there is a need for structuring AI & ML in capacity building. He opined that India can be positioned as Talent Hub for new emerging technologies for which reskilling and upskilling is very crucial. He suggested that while capacity building we need to isolate freshers from mid-career professionals and guide them through internships. He mentioned that there is right ecosystem exists and policies and this is the right time execute things to make India a Talent Hub.

Ravi Narayan, CEO, T-Hub and Co-convener, CII-Telangana IT & Digital Transformation Panel, said that there are over 10,000 startups in India and many of them are working on AI solutions. He said that one should start looking at AI as an enabler rather than as an Operating System. He also said that AI need to be leveraged for business competence and assemble the right solutions to solve the problems while create capability among the industry. Rajendra Prasad, Member, CII Telangana IT & Digital Transformation Panel & Director, Hexagon Capability Center India Pvt. Ltd., delivered the concluding remarks. Over 200 participants from Industry and Academia attended the conference.