Our quest in India to empower every person and every organization to achieve more

As we begin 2018, I feel privileged to be a part of a company that strives towards empowering every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. I take pride in the role we play in the transformation of India’s core pillars of education, healthcare, agriculture, governance, among others. In line with our company mission, in 2017 we embarked on creating products designed for India and I’m proud by the rapid adoption and implementation amongst our customers.

Here are some of those stories that have inspired me in 2017 and I hope will inspire you too to think about ways in which technology can truly impact lives and improve our society.

Education and Skilling – One of the biggest challenges in India is to ensure that students, especially in the vulnerable sections of the society, don’t drop out of schools. We partnered with the government of Andhra Pradesh to see how machine learning can help educators foresee signs of a student being on the risk of dropping out and take preventive action. In 2017, the government expanded the rollout of the program across all 13 districts in the state.  

Another area we focused our efforts was Project Sangam to up-skill workers to prepare them for jobs that exist now and in the future. The first integration of LinkedIn with Microsoft services powered this project by hosting learning modules on the cloud and coupled with the power of LinkedIn to enable candidates to find jobs.

Digital Agriculture – We started our journey with digital agriculture in 2016 with a small-scale pilot in Andhra Pradesh in partnership with ICRISAT. In 2017 we scaled the pilot to more farmers across additional states like Telangana, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. Additionally, we expanded the crops for which we can provide predictive information and saw an increase in crop yields ranging from 10% to 30%.

Other examples include, UPL Limited using our machine learning technologies to predict the possibility of pest attack providing farmers with preventive suggestions; and our partnership with the Karnataka government to help provide price forecasting of tur (split gram) three months in advance. Researchers at Microsoft India are working on Project FarmBeats, which uses sensors and aerial photography, along with data analysis systems to provide better predictive analysis for individual fields.

Improving preventive healthcare with technology – Provision of good healthcare in India remains a challenge, however, with innovative use of technology by doctors, governments, private institutes, NGOs, and companies like Microsoft, I’m optimistic about a brighter future. The Government of Telangana, for instance, is already using our cloud-based advanced analytics solution to screen children from birth to 18 years of age for major conditions affecting the health of children in the state. They also adopted Microsoft Intelligent Network for Eyecare (MINE), which was developed in partnership with LV Prasad Eye Institute. MINE uses machine learning and advanced analytics to predict regression rates for eye operations, enabling doctors to pinpoint the procedures needed to prevent and treat visual impairments. 

Individuals, institutions and non-profits are also participating in bringing about change, like Dr. Meghana Kambham, whom we assisted in her quest to improve healthcare screening in schools and tackle preventive diseases.

Making technology work for India – At nearly 0.5 billion, India has among the largest mobile-first and mobile-only (with no access to a PC) working population on the planet. To help them achieve more we launched Kaizala, a communication and productivity tool for India’s front-line workforce. We have seen states like Andhra Pradesh using Kaizala to bring different government agencies on a single platform. Apollo Tele Health Services uses it to ensure their remote clinics are meeting their hygiene standards and their staff can file reports directly from the field.  

Researchers at Microsoft India have devised ways on how low-cost tech can make drivers drive better. Project HAMS uses a smartphone as an intelligent edge device that can track multiple events such as driver distraction, fatigue and gaze tracking, as well as vehicle ranging, which determines whether a safe separation distance is being maintained with the vehicles in front.

Another set of researchers are using Bollywood movie scripts to figure out how bots of the future will decipher humans mixing languages in a conversation. We already have Ruuh, a chatbot who apart from chatting about Bollywood, cricket and weekend plans, is helping handloom weavers in rural India by generating colorful design patterns with the help of neural networks. Who could have thought about this?

Looking forward to 2018, I’m quite excited about the opportunity we have to enhance lives and livelihoods with innovative technologies and solutions.