As Tier 1 Indian regions have solid Artificial Intelligence programs already, the Govt of India through India AI Mission is setting up 570 A.I. and Data labs in Tier 2 and 3 regions, said Mohammed Y. Safirulla, IAS – Director, IndiaAI Mission under IndianMinistry of Electronics and Information Technology at PSG Tech’s Kriya 2026
Kriya is a premier intercollegiate techno fest organized by the Students’ Union of PSG College of Technology, featuring an exciting lineup of technical events, workshops, and competitions. It is taking place from March 13th and will go on till March 15th. The fest includes 30+ events, 10+ workshops, 3+ paper presentation and a total prize pool of Rs. 6 lakhs.
Mohammed Y. Safirulla, IAS – Director, IndiaAI Mission under Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology inaugurated the fest in the presence of K.Prakasan, Principal and Sudharsan, Chairperson, Students Union, PSG College of Technology.
Safirulla gave an overview on what is happening in the Indian AI arena and govt’s India AI Mission – a Rs.10,000 crore, 5 year project by the Indian Government focusing on developing Indian AI compute capacity, AI models, AI datasets, AI skills, supporting AI startups etc.
“When this mission started 2 years back, one of the primary constraints we had was the availability of GPUs. So the mission had an initial target of setting up 10,000 GPUs (a critical component for AI), but as we speak today we have 38,000+ GPUs” he said.
He added that 20,000+ GPUs are coming up in next 6 months, from across 14 providers within our country,” he said.
.He said that India AI Mission is focusing on building indigenous large and small language models to counter bias and prevent Indian data from exclusively training foreign models, and through the AI Kosh platform, access is being provided to over 10,000 AI-curated datasets, including video and audio, for researchers and startups within India.
On the other side, efforts are being taken to see how application of A.I. could be scaled up. India AI Mission is giving mentorships, funding assistance, datasets support to entities working on developing A.I. in India.
Safirulla shared that lot of skilling initiatives have been taken up through the mission as the goal is to seamlessly integrate AI into the subjects to see the impact among students. India AI has been providing lot of courses to see how youth in all parts of countries are able to equip with the latest technology. Fellowships are offered for UG, PG, and PhD students.
He said the AI and Data labs are being set up in tier 2 and 3 region to bridge the digital divide and provide access to infrastructure and quality faculty to students and researchers in these regions. “We want A.I. to not increase the digital divide in India”, he said.
