The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has called on industry players to apply for providing cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) services to academia, MSMEs, startups, government entities, and public sector agencies as part of the IndiaAI Mission. In March 2024, the Government of India sanctioned the Rs 10,732 crore IndiaAI Mission, aimed at developing a robust AI infrastructure, establishing AI centres for multi-modal large language models (LLMs), and acquiring 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs), among other initiatives.
On August 16, MeitY issued a tender seeking the empanelment of agencies to offer AI services on the cloud. The ministry stated that IndiaAI will authorize end users to access these AI services. The selected agencies will provide services to these users at rates determined through the tender process. These cloud-based AI services will be empanelled for 36 months, with the possibility of extension under mutually agreed terms.
To qualify, all AI services must be delivered from data centres located in India, and the bidders’ cloud platforms must have at least 1,000 AI compute units installed. The government is also set to release a request for proposal (RFP) for procuring 10,000 GPUs under the mission, which will specify the initial GPU capacity requirements and deployment timeline. The RFP is expected to address the eligibility of data centres and cloud service providers from other countries in the bidding process.
In June, MeitY initiated the Rs 10,372 crore IndiaAI Mission by inviting nominations from 50 top institutes, including IITs and NITs, for students working on AI projects. Selected BTech and MTech students from these National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF)-ranked engineering colleges will receive fellowships, with BTech students getting Rs 1 lakh across three tranches, and MTech students receiving Rs 2 lakh in four tranches of Rs 50,000 each.
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