IISc, Kotak Bank to offer AI-ML courses at new centre in Bengaluru

Kotak Mahindra Bank has partnered with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to set up an Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning centre at the IISc campus in Bengaluru.    

The project is a part of Kotak Bank’s CSR initiatives under the Education and Livelihood project.  

The new centre, spread around 1,40,000 square feet at the IISc campus, will offer bachelors and master’s degrees, along with short term courses.

The courses will include areas such as deep learning, financial technologies, computer vision, natural language processing, along with AI-ML courses. 

Besides, it will also include cybersecurity, fraud analytics, biomedical engineering and robotics, among others.  

“We envisage to be the Gangotri of advanced sciences encompassing education, research and innovation in AI and ML to develop the next generation of leaders in the areas of IT and robotics,” Rohit Rao, joint president and group chief CSR officer, Kotak Mahindra Bank, said.

IISc will also promote research in AI/ML to improve the talent pool, and try to close the gap on the shortage of AI talent in India.  

A July 2021 study by IDC pointed out that 74% of enterprises said lack of skills impeded overall innovation, while 76% said it also affected customer experience and profit growth.  

30% of organisations also wanted to focus on AI/ML to hire or reskill workforce in six months from the date of the study.  

“As IISc continues to provide advanced scientific and technological and education, such partnerships will help us to scale up substantially and position India as a deep tech innovation hub,” Prof. Govindan Rangarajan, director, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), said.

In February, IISc partnered with IBM to launch an innovation lab in Bengaluru, dubbed the IBM-IISc Hybrid Cloud Lab, for advanced research into Hybrid cloud technologies.