MUMBAI - Almost half a century after the original conception of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), India has finally caught up with its global counterparts. India arrived late to the AI party, but the latest government-focused policies, enterprises, and associations with industry players are paving the way for AI innovation in healthcare, education, logistics, and much, much more.

India observed NITI Aayog's National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence #AIFORALL^[1] in 2018. The policy’s implementation brought some formal structure to the long-discussed and much-awaited subject. Two years later, in collaboration with Intel and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, NITI Ayog announced the International Center for Transformative Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI), an entity aimed at everything AI.^[2] The center may possibly shape the next decade of AI in India. With the center focusing on a meticulous research and development project in three crucial areas - healthcare, agriculture, and smart mobility - the expectations are above and beyond.

While the center will develop policy, frameworks, tools, and assets related to information technology, it will also focus on collaborating with industry leaders, AI organizations, and start-ups to develop technologies and Internet protocols at ICTAI more efficiently.^[3]

India logged the highest increase of AI adoption in the world during the COVID-19 crisis, per a global study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Though the nation was ill prepared, the government acted quickly to apply AI solutions in collaboration with AI-based start-ups to handle the situation more efficiently, e.g., MyGov, a citizen engagement platform launched by the government, partnered with Amplify.ai to build a conversational chatbot that fields queries related to all things COVID-19. Around 73 percent of healthcare and pharma companies adopted AI during the same y