Can we create an inclusive India together?
In the last two decades, India has seen a significant technological transformation. It has accelerated the country’s potential to become one of the top three global economies by 2023. As we stand in the middle of an unprecedented crisis, India stands at the cusp of an opportunity, driven by digital technology that can turn adversity into hope. By doing so, also aspire to create a new, dynamic, developed, inclusive, and digitally-enabled nation. A glimpse of this ongoing transformation was exhibited at our #AIDeveloperSummit 2020, where key stakeholders from the fields of data science, machine and deep learning, and application development spoke about how collectively we can realize this vision of an inclusive and enabled India.
In unison with the industry, for the last two decades, we’ve invested in data centers, next-generation technologies, and centers of AI excellence, and are seeing the large-scale adoption of digital technologies like cloud, AI, ML, and data analytics drive the change today. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a 500 percent rise in healthcare teleconsultation, a 33 percent increase in digital payments, and an estimated three-fold growth in e-commerce. As I look towards the future, there are four vectors that I see shape the vision of India transformed.
Trends shaping a Transformed and Inclusive India
· Everything cloudified: We’re seeing an extraordinary shift to the cloud in almost every sector. According to a Forrester study, 76 percent of CEOs believe that their business model will change significantly in the next five years, enabled by the cloud. Driven by the growth in cloud, we’re also seeing the rise of ‘everything as a service’ model. Today, there are 170,000 SaaS companies in the world – there could be a million XaaS companies by 2030 and cloud will become the accepted delivery model. This presents a great opportunity for India, which is rich in software talent.
· Diversified ecosystem: Today, India is the third-largest AI start-up ecosystem in the world; it will only get diversified manifold by the confluence of entrepreneurial ambition, technology, talent, and favorable policies. Currently, 21 percent of Indian start-ups with headquarters in India are focused on global markets. There are more than 1,600 start-ups that operate in the Deep Tech space, and the Deep-Tech start-up pool has grown at a staggering CAGR of 40 percent since 2014. Fast forward there could be a richer, very diverse ecosystem catering to India’s local needs as well as innovate for the world.
· Fluid talent and workplace: The right environment to drive innovation and build a diverse Indian tech ecosystem will be fueled by a large talent pool. India is already the digital capabilities hub of the world with 75 percent of the global digital talent present in the country. This rich talent fused along with remote working model that COVID-19 has catalyzed will enable Indian developers to be available anywhere in the world. It will make gig economy mainstream and jobs will get to the talent where they are located, not the other way around.
· Localized infrastructure: All these three megatrends will be served and enabled by localized infrastructure. Aided by the government, world-class tech ecosystem, and widespread deployment of AI, Big Data, and IoT solutions, India will become a hub for world-class localized digital infrastructure. Growing cloudification, the volume of local data, and policy initiatives like National Digital Platforms, Personal Data Protection bill will help accelerate this infrastructure vision, brought together by a combination of local and global players spanning cloud and connectivity technologies.
Our commitment towards India
Intel’s commitment to India remains very strong. We’ve contributed towards the ecosystem growth for the last two decades. We’ve invested about $6 billion in R&D over the last couple of decades, facilitating expertise in sectors such as #ARA, #SOC, #5G, #AI, and #IoT, which not only outlines our effort but is a great testament to the indigenous talent. Speaking about talent, skilling is another sector we’ve significantly invested in. For example, we started @Ai4Youth, a program initiated to empower the youth with AI readiness. Other cross-industry initiatives like #PCPaatshala are helping students, teachers, and parents become comfortable with virtual training/learning environments.
Over the years, we’ve also explored many public-private partnerships, like our recent endeavor with the government and NITI Aayog to develop an International Centre for Transformative AI – an institution where we explore AI-based research-led projects that have real-world applications. We’ve even been a big part of mitigating COVID-19 and making lives better with Intel’s pandemic response technology initiative, in partnership with NASSCOM task force to put together a platform that helps respond faster to the pandemic issues. Our singular objective through all these efforts is to help innovation enable an Inclusive India, an India where technology enriches the lives of every Indian.
What does our contribution mean to developers, partners, consumers?
Our contribution revolves around the evolution of a couple of areas – Innovations to help Move, Store, and Process data faster as well as advancements in Software Tools. We’ve learned that when it comes to processors, there is no one size fits all. Therefore, for a heterogeneous workload environment, we’ve built multiple platforms such as Intel Xenon Scalable for AI acceleration, #Xe for advanced GPU, #AglileX FPGA for cloud AI, #Movidious VPU for efficiency and power management, and Atom for low power edge applications. These combined with our storage innovations like #Optane persistent memory, which helps AI workloads crunch faster data at the fraction of a cost, is turning Moore’s Law into reality! Apart from hardware and core software, developers, today can leverage our tools such as 1API or #OpenVino to just kickstart their AI/ML or edge inference journey.
Stitching the architectures, the storage technologies, and the software systems together is our ecosystem! From AI builders to partners, each one plays a role in a community which has become the binding force for innovation and technology-led efforts. I see each one of them today solving common critical issues through engagement and matchmaking and creating real-world cases of AI for the world’s benefit. As I always say, through collaboration and value, we create a hotbed of innovation!
Transforming the future of AI together
We’re already seeing AI making its impact on our daily lives, both in visible and invisible ways; the possibilities for this class of technologies are almost limitless. I believe within this uncertainty lies a significant opportunity for us to transform the nation through technology. As a technology transformation catalyst, we invite startups, developers, and young minds to:
· Innovate: Through our Intel AI Developer Program that connects to our academy courses, tools, and a community of professional developers, who can teach you to model and deploy AI.
· Create: With our OpenVINO toolkit, Intel Parallel Studio XE and more, to accelerate high-performance applications, achieve memory optimizations and advance performance for a variety of applications.
· Collaborate: Leverage capabilities and initiatives like AI builders to enable solutions or get a construct on GTM, opportunities of matchmaking, or potentially get invested out of Intel capital.
Intel is deeply committed to India and is true to our purpose of enriching the lives of every person in the country. I believe it is critical for all of us as an ecosystem to collaborate closely to fulfill the vision of an inclusive India enabled by technology. This journey promises to be excellent learning for all of us and it will make us push the boundaries of what we collectively thought was possible. I believe within this uncertainty lies a significant opportunity for us to transform the nation through technology. Together we can go even faster!