Emerging Technologies Wing, Govt. of Telangana, Telangana Forest Department, Capgemini, NASSCOM Foundation and Telangana AI Mission (T-AIM) jointly invite proposals from startups to provide AI-based solutions to monitor wildlife in forests. Indian startups- in existence for no older than eight years, registered anywhere in India can participate in the challenge. The applications for the Forest AI Grand Challenge, intended to foster innovation for the Telangana Forest Department, are open now. T-AIM, an initiative of the Government of Telangana, powered by NASSCOM, conducted a similar challenge for the Department of Agriculture last year. 

The Forest Department aims to gather detailed large-scale knowledge about the estimated number, location, and movement behaviors of wildlife in the forest region through this challenge. Furthermore, the innovators are expected to help the officials with wildlife conservation through the solutions that they create. Also, an AI-based solution can help the officials identify locations where different species are likely to be present in the future, areas with high anthropogenic disturbances, potential eco-tourism zones, animal and human kills, and provide a spatiotemporal density of different species.  

The challenge will allow the innovators to showcase their AI capabilities on a larger scale. In addition, the winner will benefit from an opportunity to implement a pilot within the State of Telangana with mentorship and field support from the Telangana Forest Department. Also, financial support of up to INR 20 Lakhs towards the implementation of the pilot project will be made available by Capgemini India’s CSR division.  The innovators will be selected based on their approach notes. The submissions made by the innovators will be judged on the approach, technique and result. The teams will be given six weeks to work on the use case. The winning criteria will combine qualitative and quantitative methods to solve the problem. The challenge has a particular ranking criterion consisting of specific parameters and weightage to select the winners. The final date for submitting Approach notes will be 22nd April 2022. The winners will be announced on 30th June 2022.