What makes India rank among the top 3 countries in Artificial Intelligence skills

In the past few years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has remained in the limelight with countries like China and the US leading the way. But, did you know that India too has joined the AI bandwagon? According to a latest LinkedIn report, India ranks third in the global front with respect to the penetration of AI skills (46%) just after China (48%) and the US (46%)! Exciting, isn’t it?

Stating that AI is ushering in a new era of digital revolution, the report highlighted three key points:

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  With an increase of 190% between 2015-17, AI skills are one of the most widely growing skills on LinkedIn.
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  The industries incorporating more AI skills within their workforce are the most dynamic industries.
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  The countries that record the highest usage of skills in and around AI are China, the USA, Israel, and Germany.

Another study titled The Augmented Human Enterprise (a collaborative study by Goldsmiths, the University of London, and Automation Anywhere) reinforces India’s stand as one among the top five countries in the world to have the highest penetration of AI skills. In a survey of four markets, this study established that India has the highest proportion of AI penetration with nearly 71% of the Indian respondents stated that their employees integrated both AI-based augmentation and Robotic Process Automation to the optimum potential.

So, how did India come to the forefront as being one of the leading countries in the world with AI skills?

The reasons behind India emerging as a forerunner of AI skills are many with a major push coming from the $143 billion outsourcing industry. For a long time, Indian IT and Consultancy magnates such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and Wipro have been providing their services to global magnates including the US Army, Microsoft, IBM, and Deutsche Bank, to name a few.

Another impetus for AI comes from the Indian government’s Digital India and Make in India campaigns both of which focus on making India a digitally savvy and self-sufficient nation.

An excellent case in point is the NITI Aayog. In the June 2018 discussion paper titled ‘National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence’, NITI Aayog seeks to embark on a mission - #AIforAll - with special focus being on five sectors - agriculture, healthcare, education, smart cities and infrastructure, and smart mobility and transportation.

India has become a hotbed for startups and with the government’s efforts to digitize India, the startup scene is further blossoming. In just a matter of a few years, the AI-based startups in India have generated around $36 million in funding from philanthropic investors like Ratan Tata and also from VC firms such as Sequoia Capital.

At present, the trend is towards developing smart AI solutions in the country itself and Indian tech giants are fast catching up with the other two global leaders (China and the US). For instance, Tata Consultancy Services is now laying increased emphasis on building a strong market for its state-of-the-art AI product, Ignio. Infosys and Wipro, too, have joined TCS in the AI race. Infosys is working on its AI platform Nia which is based on its first AI platform Mana. The aim behind developing Nia is to promote data-driven business decisions by helping businesses dive into customer and market data to understand consumer behavior, market revenue patterns, predict compliance and fraudulent issues, among others. Wipro is focusing on leveraging Holmes (Wipro’s AI platform) to automate various mundane and routine facets of fixed-price projects with the aim of boosting the efficiency of the Software Engineers while also allowing them to focus on more important tasks that demand human intelligence. In the process, Wipro aims to save around $46.5 million!

Coming to the job front, job site Indeed maintains that between June 2016-June 2018, there has been a whopping 179% increase in the number of AI-related job searches in India. The report further maintains that since the very beginning of 2018, the demand for AI skills has been at an all-time high in India.

In the 2018 Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study it was found that although companies across the globe are planning to implement AI and other related technologies with their operational infrastructure, China and India hold the greatest chances of implementing AI in the short-term. Experts suggest that a primary reason behind this is that China and India being developing nations, the impact of any technological change on such economies is always of a greater magnitude than that in a developed nation. Let’s look at the case of smartphones. China and India are two of the largest global consumers of smartphones. Why? Because consumers in a developing nation are quick to adopt the latest technological trends. And with India being one of the fasted-growing economies backed by a huge population (the second largest in the world), the Indian market is ripe for AI-penetration.

How To Gear Up For India’s Emerging AI-Driven Economy?

The most important thing that you need to do in this rapidly advancing technological age is to Upskill! Make active learning a part of your upskilling routine. Learning as you go will not only increase your knowledge base but it will also increase your chances of being hired by top tech companies (the World Economic Forum maintains that today ‘active learning’ is a key in-demand skill). By learning the in-demand skills you can maintain your relevancy with the ever-changing needs of the job industry.

Upskilling has become quite easy today, thanks to the numerous online platforms offering excellent artificial intelligence courses. Taught by the leading industry experts and academicians, the most advantageous point of learning from an online platform is that you get to learn at your own pace and convenience.

So, are you ready to gear for India’s rapidly growing AI market?

Source: https://www.indiatimes.com/trending/here-s-why-india-ranked-third-in-artificial-intelligence-research-across-the-world-360738.html (Accessed on January 22, 2019)

Booklet Guy - Amrut Deshmukh

Mumbai-based Amrut Deshmukh is gaining popularity for summarising the bestselling books, in just 20 minutes. He shares the book briefs as text or audio messages via WhatsApp.

To read more about him and his mission, do have a look at the following websites:

https://www.edexlive.com/people/2018/apr/19/amrut-deshmukhs-booklet-app-lets-you-read-a-book-in-20-minutes-2511.html (Accessed on January 22, 2019)

Do watch his interviews on YouTube at:

Amrut & Amit - Zapatlepan Te Janatepan - YouTube

Making India Read | Amrut Deshmukh | TEDxNayapura - YouTube

Download "Booklet App" by Amrut Deshmukh from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.booklet.app&hl=en_IN

NPTEL Online Course on Deep Learning

A total of 118 Videos created by NPTEL on Deep Learning. Visit the below URL for the entire playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyqSpQzTE6M9gCgajvQbc68Hk_JKGBAYT (Accessed on January 22, 2019)

Deep Learning Basics: Introduction and Overview - MIT

An introductory lecture overviewing the basics of deep learning including a few key ideas, subfields, and the big picture of why neural networks have inspired and energized an entire new generation of researchers. For more lecture videos visit our website or follow code tutorials on our GitHub repo. INFO: Website: https://deeplearning.mit.edu GitHub: https://github.com/lexfridman/mit-dee... Slides: http://bit.ly/deep-learning-basics-sl... Playlist: http://bit.ly/deep-learning-playlist OUTLINE: 0:00 - Introduction 0:53 - Deep learning in one slide 4:55 - History of ideas and tools 9:43 - Simple example in TensorFlow 11:36 - TensorFlow in one slide 13:32 - Deep learning is representation learning 16:02 - Why deep learning (and why not) 22:00 - Challenges for supervised learning 38:27 - Key low-level concepts 46:15 - Higher-level methods 1:06:00 - Toward artificial general intelligence

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5xeyoRL95U (Accessed on January 22, 2019)

Deep Learning State of the Art (2019) - MIT

New lecture on recent developments in deep learning is defined in the state of the art in our field (algorithms, applications, and tools). This is a complete list, but hopefully a good sampling of new exciting ideas. For more lecture videos visit our website or follow code tutorials on our GitHub repo. INFO: Website: https://deeplearning.mit.edu GitHub: https: //github.com/lexfridman/mit-dee ... Slides: http://bit.ly/2HiZyvP Playlist: http: // bit ly / deep-learning-playlist OUTLINE: 0:00 - Introduction 2:00 - BERT and Natural Language Processing 14:00 - Tesla Autopilot Hardware v2 +: Neural Networks at Scale 16:25- AdaNet: AutoML with Ensembles 18:32 - AutoAugment: Deep RL Data Augmentation 22:53 - Training Deep Networks with Synthetic Data 24:37 - Segmentation Annotation with Polygon-RNN ++ 26:39 - DAWNBench: Training Fast and Cheap 29:06 - BigGAN: State of the Art in Image Synthesis 30:14 - Video-to-Video Synthesis 32:12 - Semantic Segmentation 36:03 - AlphaZero & OpenI Five 43:34 - Deep Learning Frameworks 44:40 - 2019 and beyond CONNECT: - If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe to this channel. - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman-LinkedIn :https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53YvP6gdD7U (Accessed on January 22, 2019)

Accelerating The Power of Deep Learning with Neural Networks and GPUs

Deep learning capabilities are driving powerful new opportunities for AI. 

Deep learning using neural networks and Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) is starting to surpass machine learning for image recognition and other applications. Deep neural networks are helping to advance self-driving cars, faster development of new drugs, and real-time multiple-language translation for online chats. 

Find out more about: 

• Machine learning versus deep learning
• The power of inference
• GPUs delivering near real-time performance

To read the full-text, visit the following URL:

https://www.tcs.com/content/dam/tcs/pdf/technologies/artificial-intelligence/abstract/Deep-learning-with-neural-networks-and-GPUs-0917-1.pdf

Source: https://www.tcs.com/accelerating-the-power-of-deep-learning (Accessed on January 22, 2019)

Riding the artificial intelligence wave

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been the talk of the start-up town for a while now. E-commerce major Flipkart plans to create an AI unit called AIForIndia. Online transportation network company Ola recently rolled out an AI-based real-time tracking mechanism for passenger safety. But Unicorns and established players aren't the only ones bullish on this technology. There is a clutch of newbie ventures that have focused their business models primarily around AI.

From leveraging artificial intelligence for those in search of a life partner to deploying it for curating gourmet and healthy food menus, start-ups are utilising the much-in-demand technology in the most unique ways.

AI offers tremendous growth potential for start-ups, with private sector investment scaling up over the years. As per industry estimates, more than $150 million has been invested across 400 AI-focused start-ups in India over the last few years. Meanwhile, private sector investments in AI in the US have been $18 billion. In Europe, they have totalled $2.6 billion and approximately $1.8 billion in Israel in the recent past. 

Despite AI-focused investments in India appearing minuscule in front of the western countries, there is scope for growth for start-ups, say experts.

Sanmati Pande, founder and CEO, Growfitter, says, “AI helps in scaling up a business quickly irrespective of geographical boundaries. AI tools help to organise the raw data, which is compiled in specific formats and with deep learning techniques, provides detailed insights and statistics to stakeholders. AI-based start-ups are witnessing a keen interest from investors. AI can produce precise results with minimal resources and the scalability of the business can be achieved through an asset-light model with the help of AI techniques, which play a vital role for investors.”

Fitness and health-focused start-up Growfitter has built an AI-based preventive healthcare platform which is used by fitness centres, insurance companies and corporates. Their AI-powered app helps in tracking a customer's workout time and assess the fitness level, which helps in delving into the customer's health behaviour and generating a health score based on a proprietary algorithm. “Earlier, gyms witnessed renewal rates of around 25% and an average customer attendance of 100 days in a year. We have boosted the renewal rate to three times the current trend, while attendance has gone up to 175 days,'' says Pande.

A start-up like Betterhalf.ai is built around leveraging AI to help professionals find their life partners through compatibility scores based on multiple relationship dimensions and their interactions on the product. This marks a shift from traditional matchmaking which has been designed around physical, educational and caste-related traits of an individual. “We capture through AI an individual's personality in different relationship personality dimensions like emotional, social, intellectual, physical and values. We further curate through AI up to 10 relevant matches for them, cutting down 80% of the time they would have otherwise spent through traditional matchmaking,'' says Pawan Gupta, co-founder and CEO, Betterhalf.ai.

Meanwhile InnerChef, which curates ready-to-eat meals, healthy eats, gourmet experiences, indulgent desserts and detox cleanses, uses AI in building customised menus, for sales forecasting, capturing food trends and for consumer food recommendations.

Rajesh Sawhney, founder and CEO, InnerChef, says the venture has grown by 100% in the last one year. “We have plans to accelerate growth further and achieve three times revenue growth. We are currently in the National Capital Region, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai. We are looking to expand our shared kitchen platform in new geographies this year.”

Growfitter, says Pande, witnessed attained $4.5 million in gross revenues in FY18, a 300% jump. “In the current fiscal, through the launch of our AI-based Incentivised Wellness Programme, our annualised revenue run rate for FY19 shall be $10 million. We have already launched operations in Indonesia and shall enter other South-East Asian countries soon.”

Betterhalf.ai, which has over 11,000 users across India, North America, Europe, South Africa and the UAE, is aiming to attain a user base of one million in the next two years. “10% users invite other users to the product. We expect this to shoot up to over 30% as the product and the AI matching algorithm becomes even more effective,'' says Gupta.

Source: https://www.dnaindia.com/business/report-riding-the-artificial-intelligence-wave-2710165 (Accessed on January 21, 2019)