With Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled Cloud solutions, the country is now looking at solving real-life problems in sectors like agriculture, healthcare and education. Experts believe that the country needs to prioritise AI-based predictive analysis to improve outcomes in these core areas that touch millions of lives.
When it comes to agriculture, India has now embarked on a journey to bring AI sensors into the fields.
According to Microsoft's India President Anant Maheshwari, the company has begun empowering small-holder farmers in India to increase their income through higher crop yield and greater price control.
"We are working with farmers, state governments, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare to create an ecosystem for AI into farming," Maheshwari told IANS recently.
In some villages in Telangana, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, farmers are receiving automated voice calls that tell them whether their cotton crops are at risk of a pest attack, based on weather conditions and crop stage.
In collaboration with the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Microsoft has developed an AI-Sowing App powered by Cortana Intelligence Suite including Machine Learning and Power BI.
The app sends sowing advisories to participating farmers on the optimal date to sow. Farmers don't need to install any sensors in their fields or incur any capital expenditure. All they need is a feature phone capable of receiving text messages.
On the front of education, online retail giant Amazon's Cloud business arm Amazon Web Services (AWS) has now fast-tracked skilling the young via "AWS Educate" -- providing them early access to its core Cloud platform that has already transformed millions of enterprises and start-ups globally.
"For us, every individual is the source of innovation and AWS Cloud platform gives an individual complete access to technology that has transformed major enterprises. Even a small innovation that will come from Cloud-driven skilled workforce will be a significant one to make the world a better place to live," Vincent Quah, Regional Head of Education, Research and Non-profits for APAC at AWS, told IANS.
According to a NITI Aayog "National Strategy for AI" report, India is going to face a demand-supply gap of 200,000 data analytics professionals by 2020.
Another report from FICCI-Nasscom and EY said that, 9 per cent of the country's 600 million estimated workforce would be deployed in new jobs by 2022 and 37 per cent would be in jobs that have completely changed skill sets.
"Students need to be Cloud-oriented especially at a time when governments and enterprises are digitally transforming their businesses and start-ups are being born in the Cloud," Quah noted.
Nearly three million heart attacks happen in India every year and more than 30 million Indians suffer from coronary diseases.
In a novel effort to predict the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) among the Indian population, Microsoft India and Apollo Hospitals have launched the first-ever AI-powered heart disease risk score API (application programme interface).
It provides the capability of applying ML and AI to cardio-vascular health records to develop an Indian-specific heart risk score.
With the new heart risk score for India, Apollo Hospitals' AI model helps gauge a patient's risk for heart disease and provides rich insights to doctors on treatment plans and early diagnosis.
The company has also applied AI to devices for early detection of diabetic retinopathy to prevent blindness. Microsoft India also announced a partnership with SRL Diagnostics to expand the "AI Network for Healthcare" to pathology to detect cancer.
Dr Devi Prasad Shetty, Chairman and Executive Director of Narayana Health, has performed over 15,000 heart operations. His hospital chain does one-sixth of heart surgeries in India.
"His hospital chain is working on Kaizala app, Power BI and Azure to run the operation smoothly. Dr Shetty aims to put all electronic health records on Kaizala for real-time data analysis. This gives a doctor full information about a patient and his past," said Maheshwari.
The various stakeholders are just starting to understand the power of AI-enabled Cloud that can transform millions of lives in the country.
Google sacks 28 employees involved in protests over Israel govt contract
Tech giant Google has laid off 28 employees who were involved in sit-in protests at its offices over a Google contract with the Israeli government.
'Made in India' tech like DPI can be transformative for the world: Bill Gates
Microsoft Co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates on Saturday said that technologies like digital public infrastructure (DPI) that are created in India can be transformative for the world.
India is the next big playground for AI: Samsung VC, CEO JH Han
Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman, CEO and Head of the Device eXperience (DX) Division Jaong-Hee (JH) Han, who visited Samsung BKC at Jio World Plaza, Mumbai for the first time since the store's opening, said on Friday that India is the next big playground for artificial intelligence (AI).
ISRO's step towards realising Indian space shuttle 'Pushpak'
India progressed further in its attempt to realise a reusable launch vehicle (RLV)/ rocket named 'Pushpak' by successfully test landing RLV LEX-2 on Friday at the Aeronautical Test Range (ATR) in Karnataka's Chitradurga.
AI will be smarter than any single human by next year: Musk
Elon Musk who is currently locked in a battle with ChatGPT maker OpenAI said on Wednesday that artificial intelligence (AI) will probably be smarter than any single human by next year.
NASA’s Crew 7 targets March 12 to return to Earth
NASA’s Crew 7 astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) are preparing to return to Earth, after a six-month stay in the orbiting lab, the US space agency has said.
Meta suffers mega outage as FB, Instagram, Messenger stop working for millions
In one of the worst outages for Meta in years, its entire family of apps -- Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads -- went down for millions across the globe, including in India, as users were thrown out from their accounts.
Narendra Modi first PM to visit ISRO’s VSSC in 4 decades, meets Gaganyaan astronauts
Narendra Modi on Tuesday became the first Prime Minister to visit the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) in four decades, where he met the four astronaut-designates of India's Gaganyaan Mission