Nasscom selects 26 Indian startups to harness generative AI potential

To assist Indian startups in the artificial intelligence (AI) domain, Nasscom, the apex body of the IT industry, announced on Thursday the selection of 26 startups for its inaugural 'Generative AI Foundry' program.  
 
The 12-month program, in partnership with over 30 organisations from the industry and investor community, will involve select partners investing up to $25 million in the most promising startups. Nasscom stated that investors will provide support in various forms to catalyze growth and innovation. 
 
Debjani Ghosh, President of Nasscom, said, "Unlocking the full potential of generative AI startups for India, and from India for the world, will not only require a rigorous assessment of sustainable whitespace opportunities in various sectors but also innovative thinking towards attracting patient capital and facilitating compute capabilities at scale." 
 
The startups were chosen from a pool of over 70 applicants. The average startup in the cohort is two years old and has already received half a million dollars in funding from institutional investors. These startups offer solutions that generate text, audio, code, video/image, and multimodal output, with strong use cases in retail, media and entertainment, banking and financial services, and various enterprise functions. 
 
Some of the program partners include Anthill Ventures, Broadridge, Capgemini, Centific, Chiratae Ventures, Cigniti, eClerx, Endiya Partners, GitHub, Jio GenNext, MathWorks, Microsoft, Pavestone VC, Premji Invest, Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore, Silverneedle Ventures, Sutherland, and Vodafone Intelligent Solutions. 
 
During the first six months, startups will participate in intensive boot camps and receive active mentoring sessions conducted by industry experts and investor mentors. They will also have access to cutting-edge technology stacks and GPU compute nodes to accelerate their AI projects. 
 
The Telangana government has already collaborated as the state partner for the program, offering startups the opportunity to work on impactful B2G (business-to-government) use cases, said Nasscom. 
 
The Indian Generative AI landscape currently has over 60 startups dedicated to offering solutions and services across various industry verticals to their customers. According to Nasscom, more than $590 million in funding has already been invested in this space, with 2022 seeing the highest funding inflow.