Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing subsidiary of the world’s largest online retailer, is helping Indian startups leverage the power of generative AI (GenAI) to build novel solutions for agriculture, healthcare, education, environmental sustainability, and other fields that could change industries and improve lives.
A case in point. Agritech startup CropIn has teamed up with AWS to build a solution to address the pressing issue of global hunger and food insecurity. This initiative aims to help CropIn develop core data architecture, analytics, modelling, and simulation components that can aggregate global farmland data and broader climate intelligence within a single solution. The solution will provide decision intelligence to governments, development agencies, and agri- businesses, and help them ensure food security for vulnerable populations, said Shalini Kapoor, director – AWS India and chief technologist – Public Sector, APJ, AWS.
CropIn will develop workloads that could eventually constitute a Food Security Decision Intelligence solution powered by AWS. The solution would leverage AWS’s advanced computing capabilities, including high performance computing (HPC), modeling/simulation, internet of things (IoT), robotics, visual/spatial computing, and generative artificial intelligence (AI). It will combine Cropin’s domain expertise in agriculture, earth observation sciences, data science, AI/ML, and deep learning models to provide accurate and granular crop yield intelligence for the most important food crops worldwide, initially focusing on rice, wheat, potato and maize, as they collectively account for more than half of the world’s food requirements.
CropIn has digitised 30 million acres of farmlands, positively impacting over seven million farmers worldwide. “We can analyse and identify changes in cultivation patterns at a country scale, spanning from sowing to harvesting. This includes examining weather parameters, moisture availability, and disease outbreaks at scale to understand their impact on crop health and yield. These insights are crucial for policymakers, enabling them to make informed decisions to combat hunger and ensure food security,” said Krishna Kumar, co-founder & CEO, CropIn.
“Startups seek to innovate rapidly and we support them through programmes like AWS Activate,” said Kumara Raghavan, head, Startups, AWS India and South Asia. According to him, generative AI is transforming the customer service industry, making interactions more engaging and seamless. Giving an example, he said, “Yellow.ai is transforming its business with the latest cloud technologies to build dynamic AI agents to improve the customer care experience.” The conversational AI platform, which uses AWS to power its generative AI-powered voicebot and chatbot solutions, has been preparing itself for a broad international expansion.
“We’re on a remarkable growth journey, with an impressive 80% increase in our annual recurring revenue globally,” said Rashid Khan, chief product officer and co-founder at Yellow.ai. At present, the company has offices in six countries, with plans to enter more countries.
Healthify, an AI-led health and fitness app, is using AWS’ generative AI services to power its Call Analytics solution delivering customised and emotionally intelligent healthcare coaching to its customers. The platform caters to more than 35 million users with over 2,000 nutritionists, and fitness trainers; it recently launched Snap, a food recognition system that uses artificial intelligence to identify and track food intake from photos. “Snap has led to an increase in meal tracking consistency among customers, with an improvement of over 80%,” said Abhijit Khasnis, VP, engineering, Healthify. The Bengaluru-based startup, which has raised about $130 million in total from investors such as LeapFrog and Khosla Ventures, intends to build its AI capabilities stronger and expand to 20 markets, including the US and the UK.
Eka.Care, which leverages AWS-managed AI services, has built HealthBot, a medically aware chatbot for users to interact and get answers using their health reports. The solution is planned to be extended to also help doctors by providing patient-specific historical information as a summary and specific insights via intelligent search.
“Eka.Care is a digitally-enabled and connected healthcare ecosystem for better health outcomes. Trusted by more than three crore users, it aims to digitise the health records of Indian patients. Their technology can create new opportunities and generat impact in overseas markets as well,” Kapoor added.
