Telangana AI Mission T-AIM Announces Winners of Agri AI Grand Challenge

Hyderabad: The Telangana AI Mission (T-AIM), an initiative by the Government of Telangana, powered by NASSCOM, today announced RMSI Cropalytics and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) Kolkata as the winners of the first edition of the Agri AI Grand Challenge. Five organizations were chosen as finalists from nearly 50 submissions comprising startups, academia, and companies.

The award ceremony was attended by Mr. Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, I&C and IT, Government of Telangana, Dr. Praveen Rao Velchala, Vice-Chancellor, Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University (PJTSAU), and Ms. Rama Devi Lanka, Director-Emerging Technologies Wing and Officer on Special Duty ITE&C, Government of Telangana. The five finalists also participated in the event.

Earlier this year, the Telangana AI Mission (T-AIM) launched the Agri AI Grand Challenge to innovators around the country. The challenge provided innovators operating within India with an opportunity to assist the Government of Telangana in helping farmers by working on three use-cases. These include precision farming for improving yield, real-time price discovery and volume management at e-marketplaces and farmer lending using farm/output backed credit risk assessment.

At the award ceremony, Shri. Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, Government of Telangana, congratulating all the finalists and the winners said, “Since agriculture is a priority sector for the state, the innovative use of emerging technologies that benefit farmers is a key agenda item for us. The AI startups selected in this grand challenge will get an opportunity to pilot their solutions in Telangana. The Department of Agriculture and the Agriculture University will provide mentorship and domain knowledge to improvise the solution.”

Each team had six weeks to work on the use-case. A highly experienced jury comprising government representatives, technology professionals, academia and subject matter experts in agriculture evaluated the entries based on criteria such as problem identification, innovation, operational scalability, roadmap ahead, team, unique value proposition, and social impact.

The winning teams will receive a cash prize of INR 4 lakh and the opportunity to pilot their solution with the Government of Telangana.

Speaking about the event, Ms. Debjani Ghosh, President, NASSCOM said, “the Telangana AI Mission is committed towards development of the AI ecosystem within the state of Telangana. Considering the importance of agriculture for the state’s economy, we hope that endeavours such as this will help improve farmers’ incomes.”

The event was supported by PJTSAU, IIT Hyderabad, Research and Innovation Circle of Hyderabad, Amazon AWS and Cluzters.ai. During the event, the Telangana AI Mission announced that it will continue to create opportunities for innovators to contribute to solutions for the society. 

About T-AIM: The Telangana AI Mission is a specialised initiative setup under the auspices of the Emerging Technologies Wing of the Government of Telangana’s IT department, which is assigned with a mandate to make Telangana and Hyderabad the global AI hub in the coming years. For details, visit: https://ai.telangana.gov.in.

About NASSCOM: The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM®) is the premier trade body and chamber of commerce of the Tech industry in India and comprises over 2800-member companies including both Indian and multinational organisations that have a presence in India. Its membership spans across the entire spectrum of the industry from start-ups to multinationals and from products to services, Global Service Centres to Engineering firms. Guided by India’s vision to become a leading digital economy globally, NASSCOM focuses on accelerating the pace of transformation of the industry to emerge as the preferred enablers for global digital transformation. Its strategic imperatives are to reskill and upskill India’s IT workforce to ensure that talent is future-ready in terms of new-age skills, strengthen the innovation quotient across industry verticals, create new market opportunities - both international and domestic, drive policy advocacy to advance innovation and ease of doing business, and build the industry narrative with focus on Talent, Trust, and Innovation. And, in everything it does, NASSCOM continues to champion the need for diversity and equal opportunity. For details, visit www.nasscom.in.