The 14th India Innovation Summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry in Bengaluru saw the confluence of a host of personalities from diverse sectors with a unique mix of corporate leaders, entrepreneurs, government representatives, academia and general public.
The two day conference, with the theme, ‘India.AI - Driving the Future for the World’, focused on the spirit of India, to build an ecosystem that fosters and propels innovation through New Age Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR) as the foremost pillar of global growth.
Delivering the Inaugural address on behalf of the chief minister of Karnataka on Thursday, KJ George, Minister for Large & Medium Industries and IT & BT, Govt. of Karnataka, said that innovation has become the buzzword and the government is committed to make Karnataka India’s innovation hub of the world. “Karnataka is the leader in knowledge intensive industries in India, and Bengaluru is listed among the top 25 tech cities by the World Economic Forum. While we continue to maintain our leadership position, the Govt of Karnataka endeavours to promote the state as a global technology hub and a leader in new and emerging technologies,” he said.
The Govt of Karnataka has taken concrete steps to introduce progressive policies and schemes for the state. The minister added, “IT/BT and Aerospace have traditionally flourished in Karnataka due to the excellent ecosystem and talented workforce. Technologies such as Medtech and Agritech have been adopted by the state to promote inclusive growth. In order to drive innovation across the state, the government has provided grants to mentor startups across the state. New talent development centres and incubation facilities are being setup in Mysuru, Mangaluru, Kalburgi and Hubli-Dharwad. The government is giving emphasis on training and capacity building. Centres of Excellence have already been set up for Aerospace, Defence, IoT, Data Science, AI, Robotics and Cyber Security."
Addressing the conference via video call, Suresh Prabhu, Union Minister for Industry & Commerce said that the government is extremely keen to take AI as the thrust area. The ministry has submitted a report on AI and is looking forward to implement AI in all governance and across the industry. He also assured the government’s full support for the AI industry and to build and maintain a startup ecosystem that promotes innovation.
Vijay Thadani, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of NIIT said that Artificial Intelligence will be the single largest tech revolution in our lifetime. “AI has made a quantum leap in recent times and this is due to digitization of data, digitalization of processes, digital transformation and the start of machine and human collaboration. Over the last year, AI CAGR has grown over 60% and it is predicted to grow at over 50% over the next decade,” he said.
Kris Gopalakrishnan, Chairman of India Innovation Summit & Co-Founder, Infosys Ltd said that the India Innovation Summit provides an ideal platform for Indian Industry to study and understand the various flavours of innovation across all verticals of the Industry. According to him, India is currently witnessing the commercialization of Artificial Intelligence. The technology is now accessible, the cost has come down and it is touching every aspect of our life and every business.
Muthukumar, Chairman of CII Karnataka, said that the theme for the 14th India Innovation Summit was very relevant and timely, from a national, economic and a human capital development perspective. “The Summit will address the need of the nation to build an AI-led ecosystem for fostering innovation to build our youth’s future in a digitally connected world. The session plan at the event covers a broad scope in terms of AI-led business trends, technology-led new business models, key trends in the future of human labour, the emergence of machine-intelligence in operations systems, and the maturity of machine learning methods in representation of human expertise,” he said.
The India Innovation Summit also featured an exhibition arena to provide experiential understanding of the real-world products of the new human/machine intelligence paradigm.