Planes with parachutes - brilliant idea, but feasible?

India absolutely deserves a better class of investors and founders: ambitious, risk-taking, bold. In AI, the application layer is poised to explode this year. We need to be among the first to capture this stage and build with extreme urgency, clarity and ambition. Less me-too, more me-first. Meanwhile, we need to really activate our R&D ecosystem and start backing our best and the brightest minds early who are building cutting edge tech with a keen commercial mind. The game is still very, very early. Our generation is alive in one of the greatest renaissance periods in the last 100 years. Every day is day 1. Every day counts. LFG 🇮🇳🚀

Here we go. IndiaAI Mission invites proposals from startups, researchers and entrepreneurs to build state-of-the-art foundation models for the country. The models can be Large Language Models (LLMs) or Small Language Models (SLM), across multimodal text, voice or video. They must be indigenous AI models that align with global benchmarks, while addressing unique Indian challenges such as cultural, linguistic & societal context. Everyone is welcome to apply, multiple proposals will be selected with the goal of having SOTA ready India models by the end of the year. Proposals need to be sent to tenders[at]indiaai[dot]gov[dot]in. Time to put India on the map! 🚀🇮🇳 @OfficialINDIAai @GoI_MeitY

India's so-called tech companies like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and many others are sitting on piles of unused cash. These bodyshops will never invest in research and innovation as their history, and their recent statements, make it clear. It is for the government to force them to invest it in a fund. A modest $10 billion dollar collective investment by them in a GoI run Sovereign Wealth Fund will go a long way in helping Indian innovation. The GoI can top up the fund matching the investments in some ratio. India has the talent, has even the startups, but the funding environment and VC culture is ridiculously bad. So bad in fact that I sometimes think it's a conspiracy by them - collectively and deliberately stifling Indian innovation by not investing in as many startups. We have now come to a point where if Govt of India does something what private companies can do, it is looked down on. But we are also at a point where GoI seems operating more strategically and productively than India's private sector. So let the criticism come. Let them call it socialism 2.0. But GoI needs to get invested in deep tech for India's sake. The best way is a SWF with the private sector incentivized to invest in India's future. Jai Hind.

Are you prepared for January gym madness?? 😵‍💫