Год: 2025

Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi launched Odisha Yatri, a state-owned ride-booking app, today in Bhubaneswar. The launch was part of the National Road Safety Month 2025 celebrations.

Developed by Capital Region Urban Transport (CRUT), in collaboration with Moving Tech Innovations Private Limited, Odisha Yatri is the latest addition to Moving Tech’s growing portfolio of mobility platforms.

The Bengaluru-based company, known for its successful Namma Yatri app in Bengaluru, has been expanding its zero-commission model across India.

Chief Minister Majhi described the Odisha Yatri app as the state’s first homegrown ride-booking platform, highlighting its ability to connect drivers directly with passengers while ensuring fair fares, enhanced safety, and better livelihoods for drivers. He encouraged citizens to adopt the app extensively for their travel needs in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.

Moving Tech Goes Places

Odisha Yatri follows the success of Moving Tech’s other platforms, including Yatri in Kochi (their first venture) and Delhi, Yatri Sathi in Kolkata, and Mana Yatri in Hyderabad. Like its predecessors, Odisha Yatri operates on a zero-commission model, allowing drivers to retain 100% of their earnings. Google has invested in Moving Tech.

The app features transparent pricing, fast bookings, and real-time tracking. It also incorporates advanced safety protocols in collaboration with the Police Commissionerate. Future expansions will include public transport booking and tourist site ticketing, coinciding with the upcoming Pravasi Bharatiya Divas event in Bhubaneswar.

The application is integrated with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), and it works on the Beckn Protocol.

The post Namma Yatri Now in Odisha appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

By Ken Kaplan

Many enterprises are well down their path toward implementing artificial intelligence, whereas others are still unsure how they'll use it to run their business. Either way, CIOs and IT teams have many choices to make as AI continues to evolve at lightning speed.

Some feel that the train is leaving the station and they must get on board now, according to Sean Donahue, senior solutions manager at Nutanix.

"AI is not an option," he said. "It's not a speculative market. Companies know they have to go AI; they just haven't figured out what use cases they will tackle first." Donahue said this is likely because many don't fully grasp how their organizations could benefit from using AI. He likened it to when Thomas Edison introduced the light bulb in 1888.

"It was amazing to see at first sight, and the demo struck awe, but people didn't understand how to use electricity, especially since there was no infrastructure bringing electricity to their home."

Artificial intelligence adoption is a challenge many CIOs grapple with as they look to the future. Before jumping in, their teams must possess practical knowledge, skills, and resources to implement AI effectively.

AI challenges and infrastructure needs

To get their IT operations AI-ready, forward-thinking leaders are re-evaluating their entire IT ecosystem in order to build the right infrastructures to handle both existing and future AI-powered functions.

"It takes data scientists, AI engineers, and machine learning operational engineers, and then it takes good infrastructure people, along with the developers who build the apps," said Rajiv Ramaswami, president and CEO of Nutanix. "The set of tools that you need to put together AI applications and get them going to market, that's not easy either. On top of that, there is a shortage of hardware."

AI implementation is costly and the training of AI models requires a substantial investment. "To realize the potential, you have to pay attention to what it's going to take to get it done, how much it's going to cost, and make sure you're getting a benefit," Ramaswami said. "And then you have to go get it done."

GenAI has rapidly transformed from an experimental technology to an essential business tool, with adoption rates more than doubling in 2024, according to a recent study by AI at Wharton, a research center at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.. Weekly AI usage among business leaders surged from 37% to 72% and organizations reported a 130% increase in AI spending since 2023, the report found.

Traditional IT infrastructure is not equipped to handle high-intensity AI requirements like training large language models (LLMs) or processing high-volume, real-time data streams. IT professionals indicated that running AI applications on their current IT infrastructure would be a "significant" challenge, according to the Enterprise Cloud Index report, released by Nutanix in early 2024.

Donahue used a practical car metaphor that demonstrates this challenge. "My 1949 car is not up to today's demands for performance," he said. "I'm happy driving it, but I know it's never going to compete on the highway. In fact, I shouldn't be running it on the highway because it's so outdated already." In other words, most existing IT infrastructure maintains the status quo, but it won't efficiently meet intense demands from AI workloads.

As newer car designs have evolved to meet higher safety standards, fuel efficiency, and performance, enterprise IT infrastructures must evolve to provide greater computational power, flexibility, and efficiency to handle AI applications, Donahue said.

Enhanced security measures and governance frameworks are critical as enterprises seek to protect intellectual property and customer data within AI models. This is driving CIOs to seek infrastructure that can manage AI strategically and securely, and be agile enough to handle future innovations and challenges.

Managing IT infrastructure that runs AI

According to Donahue, IT teams are exploring three key elements: choosing language models, leveraging AI from cloud services, and building a hybrid multicloud operating model to get the best of on-premise and public cloud services.

"We're finding that very, very, very few people will build their own language model," he said. "That's because building a language model in-house is like building a car in the garage out of spare parts."

Companies look to cloud-based language models, but must scrutinize security and governance capabilities while controlling cost over time. "If those things don't scare me away from using it with my corporate IP and data, then I'm going to realize at the end of the month that I'm paying the hyperscalers because my AI inferencing application – that little query box that my employees use to ask questions – uses cloud GPUs, and those aren't cheap," he said.

This brings IT teams to a third step: thinking beyond cloud-based models and considering solutions designed intentionally and specifically to handle AI functionality.

Donahue pointed to Nutanix's GPT-in-a-Box, a comprehensive, pre-configured solution that combines hardware and software to support the deployment of AI models directly on-premises, in the cloud, or at the edge. This setup is designed to streamline the deployment and operation of GPT models by providing all the necessary components in a single, integrated package for integrating generative AI and AI/ML applications into IT infrastructures while keeping data and applications under IT team control.

Donahue explained that GPT-in-a-Box allows existing IT systems to streamline processes needed to onboard AI capabilities. It reduced the complexity of selecting compatible components, configuring software, and optimizing performance.

By controlling the entire stack, including hardware, software, and AI layers, IT teams can implement robust security measures designed to safeguard AI environments, including data encryption, secure data access controls, and intrusion detection systems. GPT-in-a-Box also allows teams to manage performance by leveraging the optimal resources for efficiently accessing data in the right location.

Managing apps and data across hybrid multicloud systems

According to Donahue, infrastructure must be at the center of the AI adoption strategy and there's one cloud model poised to be particularly successful: hybrid multicloud.

"Hybrid multicloud is where it's at," Donahue said. "AI just speaks to hybrid multicloud because your data sets will be everywhere. You will have to use a solution like unified storage to gather and manage them under one roof."

Hybrid multicloud environments integrate diverse computing resources and data storage types. They facilitate efficient data management and processing, pivotal for the performance of AI systems, particularly when handling extensive and varied data sets spread across multiple locations.

"People who are using hybrid multicloud already will probably have an easier time getting started with their AI efforts," Donahue said.

Prioritizing infrastructure modernization is essential. Embracing AI effectively demands that enterprises reassess and revitalize their underlying IT systems, focusing on the future and achieving the key scalability, capacity, efficiency, and analytical capabilities required to keep up in a fast-changing IT world.

Learn more about the Nutanix Enterprise AI capabilities in this blog post and video coverage of its release in November 2024.

Ken Kaplan is Editor in Chief for The Forecast by Nutanix. Find him on X @kenekaplan.

The integration of AI in education is no longer confined to urban India. In a significant shift in the country’s educational field, even remote regions are adopting this technology.

Recently, MM Tripathi, director general of the National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT), inaugurated the Majuli Study Centre under NIELIT Guwahati. At the event, there was the announcement of a special boot camp on internet of things (IoT) and AI, free for 500 SC/ST students from classes 9 to 12 in Majuli.

Assam’s AI-Driven Educational Progress

In a move to integrate AI into mainstream education, Assam has introduced AI and robotics as vocational subjects in its schools.

In April 2024, the Secondary Education Board of Assam (SEBA) announced the inclusion of a new elective subject in AI and robotics for Class 9 students in the 2024-25 academic session and Class 10 students beginning in 2025-26.

This came along with a 50% increase in practical marks for vocational papers starting from the 2024-25 academic session.

Adding to these advancements, a school in Guwahati has unveiled ‘Iris’, Northeast’s first humanoid AI teacher. It has been developed in collaboration with Makerlabs Edu-Tech under a NITI Aayog initiative.

The post AI in Education Reaches Remote India with NIELIT Initiatives appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

Aravind Srinivas, CEO of AI-powered search engine Perplexity, recently met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the national capital. In a post on X, Srinivas said, “We had a great conversation about the potential for AI adoption in India and across the world.”

Srinivas added that he was greatly inspired by the PM’s dedication to stay updated on the topic and his vision for the future.

While the company is valued at $9 billion and headquartered in San Francisco, Srinivas continues to hold Indian citizenship.

Moreover, there have been several debates about whether H1B and Green Cards should be more readily issued to immigrants in the United States.

When Srinivas met PM Modi, many on social media expressed hopes that the former would consider shifting Perplexity’s base to India.

That said, Srinivas hasn’t shied from displaying his love for his homeland.

‘I think we need a Perplexity India’

Discussions over the expansion of Perplexity to India didn’t start just yesterday. Last month, Srinivas on X said that “Perplexity India will happen”.

A few weeks ago, the Indian government announced a subscription to 13,000 academic journals, making them accessible to 18 million students, faculty and researchers.

Making an offer to PM Modi, Srinivas had said, “I would be down to figuring out an economic structure where all Indian students, faculty, and researchers can get Perplexity Pro.”

Besides that, he hasn’t revealed any plans for the company in India. AIM reached out to Perplexity regarding the same and the intent behind Srinivas’ meeting with the PM but could not elicit a response.

That said, it would be truly ideal if Srinivas could build a version of Perplexity specifically tailored for India. If adapted to India’s unique challenges, Perplexity could significantly improve the quality of life for millions.

For one, accessing information from Indian websites is a painful task. Generally, one can find information hidden deep inside menus and navigation bars, with poor readability and, often, too much complexity. If Perplexity can build a solution that provides the latest information from government websites upon prompts, there’s nothing like it.

The Indian government recommends using the WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards when designing a website’s user interface. These internationally recognised standards ensure digital content is accessible to all users and provide a framework for enhancing the user experience.

However, the recommendation contradicts reality. A study of 65 e-government websites found that the majority of them fail to meet the set standards. The figure below describes all the checkpoints these websites violated.

For instance, the report revealed that several websites feature text and background colours with inadequate contrast, which makes them difficult to read.

Moreover, multiple websites failed to provide adequate information about the layout, table of contents, or sitemap.

“Some groups may find it impossible or even difficult to access information on the Indian e-government websites. Thus, the results reveal that accessibility features have not been given due attention during the design and development of e-government sites,” the report read.

The Average Indian Cannot Skim Through Government Documents

AIM spoke to Mandeep Gill, co-founder of Labour Law Advisor, a platform that educates over 50 lakh subscribers on India’s laws, policies, and citizen rights, who cited the discovery of these documents as another problem.

“When you search on Google, the actual details of the law are never found on the first page, and we see a lot of news articles instead…The problem with this is that we’ve to take the word of these news articles and five different articles to provide five different sets of information.”

He also revealed a personal experience where several media outlets reported a ceiling on the Employees Pension Scheme, but after finding the actual document and the law, he found that no such law clause existed.

“The whole country believed that there can’t be a pension higher than ₹7,000, but actually, there’s nothing like that in the law,” Gill added. Problems like these can have major repercussions.

Having said that, Perplexity can also immensely help digest the contents of a government document. Most original documents aren’t written in a way the average Indian can understand.

“So, you either have to be a law student, or you must know how to read actual laws. Sometimes it could be a 400-page law, and you are only finding a needle in a haystack. Skimming through the pages requires some sort of experience to get what you need, and it’s not easy for a common person,” Gill further said.

Srinivas can get Perplexity to solve these problems in India. However, he himself is fighting a different set of problems.

Is 2025 the Year Srinivas Gets His Green Card?

Srinivas has yet to get his green card, officially known as a permanent resident card, in the US. A few weeks ago, in a post on X, he said, “I think I should get a green card. What do you think?” To this, xAI founder Elon Musk, who will soon head US President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), responded, “Yes.”

In October, while expressing frustration over the difficulty of immigrating to the US, Srinivas said, “I have been waiting for my green card for the last three years. I still haven’t gotten it.” Moreover, he added that it took more than five years for him to seek permission to leave the US and step back in.

He also expressed optimism about the new regime in the US. “Excited for Elon and Vivek [Ramaswamy] to make legal immigration better. I would even push for a higher application fee (e.g. 2x) in exchange for high-quality fast service,” Srinivas said in a post on X.

Sriram Krishnan, who is set to take charge as the senior policy advisor on AI at the White House, wrote on X, “Anything to remove country caps for green cards [permanent resident card] or unlock skilled immigration would be huge.”

Even Trump, right before the election results, appeared in a podcast episode and said, “I think you should automatically get a green card as part of your diploma to be able to stay in this country.”

Does this mean Srinivas will finally receive his green card? Or should he head back home?

“Why struggle for a green card, Aravind? Come back to India! Grow Perplexity from here,” said journalist Vikram Chandra on X. Following this, Deedy Das, Indian-origin venture capitalist at Menlo Ventures, said that it is a question that needs to be asked to India instead.

However, all things considered, if Perplexity were to expand in India, it wouldn’t be free from challenges.

The post India’s Problems are Perplexity’s Golden Opportunity appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.

OpenAI chief Sam Altman is confident in the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and predicts that AI agents could enter the workforce by 2025.

“We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents join the workforce and materially change the output of companies,” Altman wrote in a recent blog post.

He further expressed confidence that OpenAI has mastered the methods necessary to build Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) as traditionally understood, emphasizing the potential of these technologies to enhance human capabilities. “We continue to believe that iteratively putting great tools in the hands of people leads to great, broadly-distributed outcomes,” he said.

Looking beyond AGI, Altman revealed that OpenAI is shifting its focus toward developing superintelligence, which he believes could revolutionise scientific discovery and innovation. He described superintelligent tools as capable of performing tasks far beyond human capabilities, potentially leading to unprecedented levels of abundance and prosperity.

“With superintelligence, we can do anything else,” he said, suggesting that these advancements could accelerate progress in fields such as medicine, climate science, and technology.

Altman acknowledged that the concept of superintelligence may sound speculative but expressed confidence that its significance will become apparent in the coming years. “We’ve been there before and we’re OK with being there again,” Altman said, referencing the company’s history of pursuing ambitious goals.

When OpenAI released its most powerful o3 series of models, speculations arose about whether the model achieved AGI, given its performance on benchmarks.

The o3 model scored almost 90% on the ARC-AGI benchmark, exceeding human performance.

Meanwhile, Microsoft and OpenAI have agreed on a new, specific definition of AGI, or artificial general intelligence. According to a report, OpenAI can only achieve AGI when it has built a system that can generate $100 billion in profits.

Interestingly, a few days ago, Google’s senior product manager Logan Kilpatrick, posted on X, “Straight shot to ASI is looking more and more probable by the month… this is what Ilya saw.”

Kilpatrick highlighted the approach taken by Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI and the Superintelligence (SSI). “Ilya founded SSI with the plan to do a straight shot to Artificial Super Intelligence,” Kilpatrick said. “No intermediate products, no intermediate model releases.”

The post AI Agents Set to Join the Workforce by 2025, says OpenAI’s Sam Altman appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.