It is a well-established fact that when it comes to research and innovation in the space of artificial intelligence, India ranks amongst the top nations. The idea of AI came to India first with the works of legendary academician Professor H.N. Mahabala in the 60s, and later with the creation of UNDP backed Knowledge-Based Computing Systems (KBCS) in 1986. 

Today India is the fourth-largest producer of AI-relevant scholarly papers since 2010. Between 2010 and 2019, a total of 84,384 AI papers have at least one author affiliated with India, with many of the pioneers in the field starting their AI journey in an Indian academic institute such as IITs. Yet there is a huge gulf between the volume of academic research and AI products deployed based on the market.

According to Professor Surjya K Pal of IIT Kharagpur, academia and industry in India are two parallel lines that never converges. In recent years, there have been many attempts to build a strong Industry-Academia collaboration across the country with varying success. However, many believe that enabling these brilliant minds in our country is the key to unlocking India’s AI potential, especially with leaders such as Ajay Sawhney, Secretary, MeitY, who proposed that INDIAai should undertake this responsibility of bringing the industry and academia together as one of its missions for its second year.

As a result of this, and based on the numerous interactions conducted with some of the brightest academicians in AI in India, INDIAai along with NASSCOM launched the first edition of the Lab2Market initiative. The first edition was held at XperienceAI - NASSCOM’s annual flagship AI event. The winners will be offered industry connections and other opportunities with NASSCOM’s 10,000 start-up initiative as well as other NASSCOM programs. These includes: 

• Use of 10000 startup’s Incubation facility as needed for 6 months. 
• Access to the 10000 Startup Kit as part of the virtual incubation facility
• Access to all the virtual sessions hosted by 10000 startups
• Connect with regional leads - Once a month dedicated session with warehouse managers for 6 months

The first edition was held on August 3 on the first day of the NASSCOM Xperience AI event, with presentations from the selected applicants. The winners in the first year include submissions from faculty and students of IIT Ropar and IIT Kharagpur, as well as submission from researchers at IISc Bangalore. 

Read more about the winners of fist edition of Lab2Market here.