Industry Leaders Speak about the Artificial Intelligence Boost in Budget 2019 Startups and businesses are excited about the inclusion of Artificial Intelligence in Budget 2019

"In order to take the benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related technologies to the people, a national program on AI has been envisaged by our government. This will be catalyzed by the establishment of the national centre on AI as a hub along with centres of excellence," were the words of the Indian Finance Minister Piyush Goyal, announcing the Indian government's inclination towards AI. The announcement has got the AI practitioners and startups real hopeful about its road ahead.

Apart from AI, India has had been rooting for, Blockchain, Machine learning (ML), Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data for its Budget 2019. The year 2018 witnessed the Indian government taking several initiatives towards the promotion of Blockchain. Although AI has been implemented by several startups, the government took the back seat in the promotion of the technology when compared to economies like the US and China, until today.

The promotion of AI in particular, has excited startups and businesses who are already handling the technology and also the ones who are looking forward to work in the particular technology.

Talking with a few industry experts, who are already handling the technology, Entrepreneur India has been able to know what the industry leaders are looking forward to after the Budget 2019.

AI to Create Opportunities for Building New Businesses

Yulu Bikes is a bike sharing company that uses AI in its businesses and Naveen Dalchuri, the co-founder and CTO of Yulu says how the company is employing the technology in its process, "We are primarily using AI and Machine Learning for our vehicle rebalancing. Our model learns from past data/usage and contextual data to improve the rebalancing accuracy and increase vehicle utilization. We are also using AI to reduce the noise from the IoT alarms and accurately identify the vehicles that have to address on highest priority."

The company's other co-founder and CEO, Amit Gupta states, "Data is the new oil in today's technology world. AI can not only make the existing processes better but also creates opportunities to build new businesses. After the digital revolution led by affordable mobile phones and data plans, India is producing very high-quality data about our digital and physical habits at scale." He also believes that as a country we need to make sure that this data is available to key stakeholders in the country; else there is a risk of India becoming a digital colony. This data becomes the input to several algorithms built using AI. The policy on AI has been under consideration, glad that it is finally here. Next decade is for India to grow, shine and become one of the top 3 economies of the world with the help of digital & physical infrastructure and our young demography.

A Walk towards a Bright Future

Sachin Dev Duggal, founder & CEO of Engineer.ai is excited about the inclusion of AI in Budget 2019. He says, "It's excellent to hear the announcement from Finance Minister Piyush Goyal that India will create a National Centre for AI. Considering the global market for AI is expected at around $190 billion by 2025, this puts Indian companies and organizations at the forefront of capturing the AI market. Well done."

Before wrapping up his view, he opines that the overall technology sector made gains today, which offers India a bright future of the efficient solutions that technology could bring to the country, continent and world.