IBM, Microsoft, NASSCOM ink MoUs with Guj Gov to strengthen the Deeptech Initiative program

Chief Minister of Gujarat along with key government officials, representatives from academia and the industry leaders. Reuters

The Department of Science and Technology, Government of Gujarat, IBM, Microsoft and NASSCOM have signed multiple MoUs to establish an AI cluster for the BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) sector and an AI Centre of Excellence (CoE) at the GIFT, Gandhinagar.

Additionally, a capacity building program for 25,000 students along with a STEM workshop for 10,000 high school students was also launched. The MoUs were signed in the presence of Bhupendra Patel. Chief Minister of Gujarat along with key government officials, representatives from academia and the industry leaders.

Addressing the event, Mona K Khandhar, Principal Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, GoG, said, “The proposed CoE for AI with Microsoft and NASSCOM will be India’s first initiative dedicated for Artificial Intelligence and the work will begin by next week. The Gujarat Government is focused on capacity building in AI and Deeptech. This initiative will train 25,000 students within the next three years. Under this initiative the students will learn deeptech skills along with certification from prominent trainers like IBM.”

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Khandhar also said, “CoE for AI and the AI cluster for BFSI are focused on sector specific AI use case development, secure data exchange, infrastructure setup, AI model training, pilot projects and the adoption of AI models across various sectors.”

“We are also working with Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar to establish 180 workshops for disseminating STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) knowledge to around 10,000 students per year”, added the Principal Secretary.

As part of the capacity building program, letters were issued to various institutions including Gujarat Technological University (GTU), PDEU, IITRAM, Ganpat University, L&T Edutech, TATA Consultancy Services and Silver Touch Technologies Limited.

Sandip Patel, Managing Director for IBM India & South Asia region, said, “We have been working in Gujarat for a long time. We have been managing the supply chains of big corporations like Amul. Artificial Intelligence is here and now we need to scale it up to provide a business environment enabled with AI.”

Talking about the need for the skill development with respect to AI, Patel said, “As per the IMB Global Auction Report, 59% of the Indian companies with 1000+ employees are using Ai in their day to day operations, 70% of the companies have started to build up on AI related investments and 30% of the companies say that they are facing challenges in scaling up because of the availability of limited skills and tools in the country.”

He further said, “In order to tackle the needs and requirements for the scaling up of AI in business, IBM has developed a dedicated platform ‘Watson’. This platform helps the businesses in organizing data, helps them use large language models (LLM), small language models (SLM) and other third party models. Watson will also help the businesses in governing artificial intelligence.”

“Furthermore, IBM’s Watson is hybrid by design (aimed to address the data residency issue) which means that it combines and unifies public cloud, private cloud and on-premises infrastructure to create a single, flexible, cost-optimal IT infrastructure. It is multi-model by nature and is focused on responsible artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is the next big thing in technology. Whether you like it or not you are going to have to live with it. And if India does not want to lag behind, Indian people need to scale up faster”, concluded Patel.