How Big Is AI And What’s Its Impact
The importance of artificial intelligence has been recognised for quite a long time now, mostly due to crazy sci-fi movies, but also because of its indispensable contribution to several technical fields – from robotics and automation to medicine and motorsport. AI is helping engineers make tools and techniques faster, better, and cheaper. It’s helping businesses save time, money, and effort on the management of resources.
Artificial intelligence has impacted several industries, making jobs easier, reducing the workload and, controversially, the number of resources required to do any particular job. What both scares and excites people is the vastness of AI’s capabilities and the rapid pace at which it is growing. No matter which side of the spectrum you’re on, you have to admit this is a pretty cool time to be in this space of science and engineering.
The AI space in India
India had been an underdog for some time on all things science – after all, you cannot expect a third world country to match the likes of Russia and the USA right, at least not after just being independent for less than a century? Well, if you look at the country‘s achievements in the areas of science and technology, you would definitely shift your stance.
Despite being an underdog, India has paced itself really well in these areas of growth, and is still continuing to show incredible progress – AI being one such aspect. Over the past five years alone, Indians have filed over 4000 AI patents across multiple disciplines, leading the whole world to pay closer attention to what this “new kid” has to say. We couldn’t be more excited!
AI startups in India
Myelin Foundry
Myelin was incorporated in the year 2019 and it is an industry-focussed product startup founded by Gopichand Katragadda, Ganesh Suryanarayanan and Aditi Olemann. It is based in Bangalore and the company aims to transform industry outcomes by providing artificial intelligence algorithms through video and voice as well as sensory data.
What the company tries to do is leverage the power of advanced neural computers on the floors of some of the biggest factories in the country, by making automated decisions more reliable and providing availability of the plant equipment all the time, with little to no inconvenience to workers. Some of the other solutions that Myelin Foundry provide are Edge AI platforms – to provide real-time analytic and insight. They also help in building machines that make decisions based on artificial intelligence towards remote equipment and user devices as well as video and sensor data.
Nextbillion.ai
The company was founded by Ajay Bulusu and Shaolin Zheng and has its headquarters based in Singapore, but its main offices are in Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Beijing.
NextBillion aims to provide the world with the fastest, most cost-effective and advanced hyperlocal AI solution for reducing delivery and travel time. It is a mapping platform for enterprises that helps them to address all the map related requirements. Not only that but last-mile optimisations as well as navigation and managing road restriction to finding what the most suitable road is for vehicles – there’s something for everyone at NextBillion.
Just one year into its incorporation the company has marked more than 200,000 km of road distance and has managed around 100,000 restrictions as well as 200,000 API calls. In the near future, they are aiming to stake a claim to the throne of global leaders of artificial intelligence in hyperlocal solutions.
Wysa
Wysa was founded in the year 2015 by Ramakant Vempati and Jo Aggarwal. The company helps its users to self-manage stress by blending a good mixture of guided listening with the help of professional experts. The company is based in Bangalore and has developed an AI-powered chatbot that will help users using cognitive and behavioural techniques to listen to the user and make them feel heard.
Because of tapping into this much-needed feeling of being heard, there are more than a hundred million conversations that have gone smoothly through Wysa, and feedback has shown that there is a 40% improvement in the self-reported symptoms of depression in users. It is also part of the Google Assistant investment program and was awarded the best app of 2020 by Google Play.
Emotix
Emotix is based in Mumbai and was founded by Sneh Vaswani, who graduated from IIT Bombay, and Prashant Iyengar along with Chintan Rajkar. The startup has developed a companion robot – Nico – which will double down as a nanny for parents finding it difficult to keep their children occupied.
This startup leverages the field of AI, robotics and automation, as well as IoT, which will be used to identify moods and emotions and initiate conversation according to the surroundings of a child. The company has also provided a feature that will use computer vision to identify, remember and reconnect known faces as well as objects. Emotix is presently backed by Ivycap Ventures, Chiratae Ventures, and Yournest Capital.
WotNot
The company was founded in 2018 by Mitul Makadia. It is a B2C company with a chatbot platform and a live chat solution. It provides enterprises with the support to build and create powerful chatbots which will engage with every visitor and enhance the customer experience to a real-time conversation across multiple channels.
The company has provided many features, which includes version control autosave as well as auto arrange and bot management which will undo and redo the clones among others. the startup is based in Ahmedabad and it helps to solve business challenges including generating leads, booking appointments and scaling customer support.
Loginext
The company was founded in the year 2014 by Dhruvil Shanghvi and Manisha Raisinghani. It is a transportation and automation startup that offers logistics and data analytics with warehouse management and asset tracking services.
It has an AI forward logistic management software which will help you track the workforce in real-time as well as enabling all the enterprises and their business plans to manage the dispatch schedule and delivery routes. It is based in Mumbai and the SaaS company has already moved its base to the US. It has its offices in Singapore, Indonesia and UAE. It is currently operating in more than 50 countries and works with more than 150 enterprises which also include McDonald’s, Decathlon, and Myntra.
Qure.ai
Qure was founded in the year 2016 by Prashant Warier and Pooja Rao. This one is similar to Wysa and focuses on using AI to make healthcare more affordable and accessible to everyone. With the combination of deep learning and clinical or scientific and regulatory knowledge, Qure helps to design real-world solutions for people who aren’t fortunate enough to afford healthcare.
It is currently based in Mumbai and uses a curated AI algorithm for medical imaging. With the help of deep learning, it can easily analyse abnormality on X-rays or CT scans and MRI. Qure is powered by the likes of Nvidia, Azure, AWS, and Intel, and is perhaps one of the best healthcare apps in the country presently.
Closing Thoughts
We are currently living in the age of artificial intelligence. There’s no denying that fact. Companies have spent billions of dollars just to be relevant in the ever-changing environment that we have today. If a company is not able to keep up, it’s going to be out of the industry much sooner than it can predict. There are a lot of startups that are coming up right now with their unique brand and identity, that have a lot of potential.
Being a part of this culture, and helping build one of the fastest-growing technologies is what any young enthusiast should look towards. With AI anything is possible, and to help it get there, brilliant minds need to come together. India has the potential to bring these talented minds together, so it will be really exciting to see what kind of future unfurls in the next five years.
