Tech giant Google, on Tuesday announced funding support of $8 million to India’s AI Centers of Excellence for health, agriculture, education, and sustainable cities. These centers are established under the Ministry of Education for fostering research, developing scalable solutions and training of future ready workforce.
This is in addition to the $400,000 support for development of the country’s health foundation model, aimed to leverage MedGemma to build India’s health-on-the-spot model, the company said.
Google on building AI models for healthcare
“As a first step, our tech partner Ajna Lens will work with experts from AIIMS to build the models that will aim to improve the efficiency of healthcare providers and support patient outcomes throughout India,” Harsh Dhand, GenAI, Research, Labs & Core partnership lead at APAC, Google said.
The executive added that these models will help save clinicians’ time and improve early diagnosis. Outcomes from the project will be made openly available as part of the digital public infrastructure.
Doctors flag the need for Indian specific datasets
The doctor involved in the collaboration highlighted the need for Indian-specific datasets, mainly in dermatology, where global AI models are often biased towards lighter skin tones. The initiative seeks to develop a foundation model for South Asian skin, improving diagnosis of conditions such as eczema and leprosy.
Speaking at Google’s Lab to Impact dialogue, Minister of Education, Dharmendra Pradhan said, “India is approaching artificial intelligence as a strategic national capability, not as a short-term technology trend. The four AI Centres of Excellence have been conceived as a coordinated national research mission, advancing foundational research, responsible AI, and applied solutions that serve public purpose, and contributing to our larger aspiration of Viksit Bharat 2047.”
Senior executives added that AI revolution will be shaped by three major shifts, mainly AI accelerating scientific discovery, AI augmenting human capabilities, and India emerging as a global leader in AI-powered solutions.
The company added that it is working with National Health Authority (NHA) to deploy advanced AI to convert millions of fragmented, unstructured medical records, such as doctor’s clinical and progress notes into machine-readable Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard.
The partnership also extends to bring over 400,000 NHA-registered health facilities, including hospitals, clinics, and diagnostic labs, on Google Maps and Search, allowing people to easily find and navigate to their nearest health centers with the most updated official information.
Google would provide Wadhwani AI with $4.5 million in funding to support multilingual AI-powered applications for health and agriculture. This includes $2.5 million for HealthVaani, an LLM-based conversational AI assistant and the remaining to help develop and deploy Garuda, a new Indian language model for agriculture.
Additionally, the company has also made a $2 million founding contribution for setting up the new Indic Language Technologies Research Hub at IIT Bombay.
In a move towards ensuring that the scaled impact of AI is responsible and sustainable, the tech company has partnered with ReNew Energy for a 150 megawatt (MW) solar project in Rajasthan, India. As part of the agreement, Google will receive environmental attribute certificates (EACs) and allocate them to its value chain emissions. Concurrently, the company plans to engage with key suppliers to boost clean energy adoption.
The partnership builds on Google’s prior collaborations with Adani Group and Clean Max, which added 186 MW of wind and solar power to India’s grid.
Additionally, Google is providing $50,000 of funding to 3 major startups- Gnani.AI, CoRover.AI, and BharatGen to help them scale their efforts to include more of the Indian diaspora in AI.
