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Bengaluru ranks 5th among top 50 global AI cities: Karnataka IT Minister Priyank Kharge

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Silicon city Bengaluru ranks fifth among the top 50 artificial intelligence (AI) cities globally, says Karnataka IT Minister Priyank Kharge at the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2024.

Highlighting the nation’s progress in adapting to new technology compared to countries such as the US and Germany, the minister believes that India has a demographic advantage with talent.

“Out of the top 50 AI cities in the world, Bengaluru is number five. In terms of AI adaptability across the globe, we are number one. We have a 57% AI adaptability in the Indian ecosystem, followed by the US at around 24%, and then Germany. If you ask me what the government needs to do to ensure we tap into the value of AI, firstly, we need to focus heavily on skills,” Kharge said.

The minister, who was speaking at a panel discussion titled “AI for India 2030”, further pointed out that Karnataka has shifted from merely being a regional tech hub to catering to global markets.

The session was moderated by Purushottam Kaushik, Head, World Economic Forum. Other panellists included Daisy Chittilapilly, President of Cisco India and SAARC; Smita Deorah, Co-founder of edtech unicorn LEAD; Balakrishna DR, Head of AI at Infosys; and Harshil Mathur, CEO of Razorpay.

“To ensure that we have the most talented human resources—then we don’t cater only to the local environment but also to the global ecosystem. The Karnataka ecosystem is no longer catering to Bengaluru. We have close to 837 Global Capability Centers (GCCs) here that are researching for their headquarters in America and Europe, for innovating and inventing for the world,” Kharge said.

The state government launched a new GCC policy focused on reskilling and upskilling to attract an additional 500 GCCs to the state, aiming for a $50 billion output solely from Karnataka.

Kharge further announced the launch of a new Center of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence, established in partnership with the IIT Alumni Centre Bengaluru (IITACB).

Solving sector-specific use cases

Pointing out AI’s role in reshaping the education sector, Deorah said, “India has 270 million school-going children. If this had to be a country by itself, it would be the fifth largest country in the world, and data shows that our kids are lacking in basic literacy and basic numeracy.”

Amid a shortage of skilled teachers, AI can serve as an enabler to achieve better learning outcomes, Deorah proclaimed.

“AI can be a big enabler because we have lots of children but not enough teachers or skilled educators. AI can play the role of both being an assistant to teachers, where it can give a lot of insight and predict which child needs support. The teacher can focus more on personalised support and remediation versus just teaching to the averages,” she added.

From a services perspective, the IT services industry has a great opportunity with AI, says Infosys AI Head Balakrishna DR.

“Take Infosys as an example: we have created industry blueprints for 23 different industries on how they can adopt AI, which use cases will give them the best benefit. We have come up with how they should manage their data, and the strategy. Just like in the old internet era or the digital transformation, the Indian IT industry actually powered enterprises making that transformation across the world. I think the same opportunity lies even with AI,” he explained.

Daisy Chittilapilly, President of Cisco India and SAARC, addressed the recent debates on whether India should focus on building large language models (LLMs) or applications.

“Is building LLMs our path to success? Or are we the data capital of the world? We know all the use cases that matter. We have a startup ecosystem, which is the third largest, and second largest—depending on which report you read. Maybe our monetisation comes from using our brain power to focus on solving problems, because all technology is [built to] ultimately solve all problems,” Chittilapilly said.

This follows Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani’s remarks at Meta’s Build with AI summit in Bengaluru last month, where he encouraged India to prioritise developing AI use cases over building LLMS.





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Jack Dorsey-led Block’s Bitkey crypto wallet launches inheritance feature

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Bitkey, the self-custody crypto wallet from Block Inc, founded by Jack Dorsey, has launched an inheritance feature on its platform to enhance control and privacy for its users.

The feature is set to roll out in December and launched widely in January 2025.

Bitkey hopes to disrupt the current landscape with the new offering that enables people who hold keys to their Bitcoin to have full control of their money. The company said that its inheritance ensures that the funds being held in a Bitkey wallet are transferred to a designated beneficiary after the passing of the owner.

“With this inheritance solution, we are offering customers a safe and simple way for them to pass their assets onto the next generation,” said Jason Karsh, Business Lead for Bitkey, in a statement. “Bitcoin is a multi-generational asset, and we think Bitkey should be multi-generational, too. We designed inheritance to be simple for beneficiaries to transfer, access, and manage their inheritance when the time comes.”

Bitkey’s inheritance feature will be initially clubbed with the purchase of Bitkey hardware devices. To set up the feature, the owner can invite a beneficiary through the Bitkey app. Once accepted, the inheritance plan will be created.

The company also added that to protect against any fraudulent claim, it has put in a six-month waiting period that must be completed before a beneficiary can access these funds.

Introduced by US-based Block, Bitkey is a self-custody Bitcoin wallet that can be accessed through a mobile app, a hardware device, and a set of recovery tools.

In 2023, the company entered the Indian market with Bitkey.





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India’s digital public infrastructure finds many takers globally, says NISG CEO

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The Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) of India is now truly going global, as an increasing number of countries are seeking assistance to implement this technology platform to deliver various citizen services.

“There is a huge opportunity of taking it (DPI) globally,” said Rajiv Bansal, CEO, National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) during a panel discussion on the topic “Digital Public Infrastructure of India going Global” at the Bengaluru Tech Summit (BTS) 2024.

DPI in India has become the driving force for delivering services from both the government and private sector. These include the nationwide Aadhar identity and the unified payment interface (UPI) for financial services.

UPI

According to Bansal, NISG is engaged with several countries to come out with pilot projects or provide consultancy services on how they can implement DPI. Sri Lanka is undertaking a nationwide ID project, while other countries like Gambia, Myanmar, Belize and Fiji are keen to implement DPI to deliver several citizen services.

NISG is a not-for-profit organisation set up in 2003 by the Indian government, based on a public-private partnership model. It aims to assist governments in ushering in smart governance, process reforms and digitalisation.

Bansal said the DPI framework has achieved a certain level of maturity where it is based on fundamentals of open source technology, interoperability, subject to regulation and offering services for social welfare.

The greater interest for India’s DPI has largely come from developing countries who are looking at this platform for setting up a national identity setup similar to Aadhar. According to Bansal, developed economies are also interested in DPI but for other kinds of services.

However, Sharad Sharma, Founder – iSPIRT Foundation, was of the belief that the various functionalities from DPI till date in India are early iterations, and there is a vast scope to deliver numerous other services especially in the area of healthcare.





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Deepinder Goyal clarifies Chief of Staff role is salaried, Rs 20 lakh condition a filter

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Deepinder Goyal has clarified that Zomato does plan to pay the candidate selected for the Chief of Staff role, and the condition of paying Rs 20 lakh to initiative was merely a filter as the company has no plans to collect the amount.

In a post shared on X, the company’s co-founder and CEO also announced after closing the application deadline for his chief of staff opening.

This comes a day after Goyal put up the job posting on the social media platform. To make the offer not as lucrative, he announced that the role would not have any salary, at least for the first year. Not only this, the selected candidate would have had to contribute a sum of Rs 20 lakh to Zomato’s Feeding India initiative. 

Any salary discussion would only happen from the second year, he said in the original post. During the first year, Zomato would also offer Rs 50 lakh to the charity selected by the candidate.

Zomato received more than 18,000 applications and closed the process at 2 pm earlier today.

The foodtech executive had claimed that the opportunity offers 10X more learning than a two-year degree from a top management school.

Goyal, in an earlier post, had highlighted that applicants came from a diverse mix of financial backgrounds, categorising them into those who have all the money, those who have some of the money, those who claim they don’t have the money, and those who genuinely don’t have the money.

It is unclear what the Chief of Staff’s duties will be as the job description is vague. The job would entail “anything and everything to build the future of Zomato (including Blinkit, District, Hyperpure and Feeding India),” the post read.





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