NITI Aayog, AWS, and Intel collaborate to accelerate digital innovation in India
Author: BI Bureau
New Delhi: In a path breaking initiative, the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog), India’s national policy think tank, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Intel have come together to establish a new experience studio at the NITI Aayog Frontier Technologies Cloud Innovation Center (CIC). Located in NITI Aayog’s New Delhi premises, the studio will be a hub for collaboration and experimentation to enable problem solving and innovation between government stakeholders, startups, enterprises, and industry domain experts.
The studio will help showcase the potential of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR), block chain, and robotics to accelerate their application in public sector use cases. The studio will encourage open innovation and serve as a hub for government, healthcare, education, and nonprofit startups from India to showcase their solutions. It will also provide startups with an option to access necessary support to enhance and scale their solutions.
According to an official statement, NITI Aayog will also leverage the studio to demonstrate the application of geospatial, AR/VR, drone, and IoT solutions in verticals such as healthcare, agriculture, and smart infrastructure. Major homegrown industry leaders in respective fields of technology and research – like Map My India in geospatial solutions, Raphe mPhibr Pvt Ltd in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and the Centre for Advanced Research in Imaging,
Neuroscience and Genomics (CARING), which delivers AI in healthcare – and global leaders like Dassault Systemes, are demonstrating their solutions at the studio. Start-ups like Vizara Technologies and Agatsa Software private Ltd will be showcasing their innovative products. Startups will also be encouraged to participate actively in the studio through hackathons, grand challenges and other capacity building initiatives, in collaboration with the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) and Atal Incubation Centres (AIC).
The studio was inaugurated today in the presence of Dr Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, by Dr Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog and Rahul Sharma, President, Public Sector – Amazon Internet Services Pvt Ltd. (AISPL), AWS India and South Asia. Prakash Mallya, VP and MD, Sales, Marketing and Communications Group, Intel India attended the inauguration virtually.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has shown that effective collaboration and experimentation matter significantly when developing innovative solutions to address problems of scale in the country. As the NITI Aayog Frontier Technologies CIC identifies societal challenges to address, it is important to embrace a culture of open innovation and working backwards from problem statements. The new experience studio with AWS and Intel will further support our mission to identify and deploy leading edge technologies to drive continuous innovation in delivering citizen services,” said Dr Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog.
“Cloud innovation is fundamental to unlocking the potential of future technologies to create scalable impact across sectors. Intel is committed to expanding access to technology resources and knowledge through our collaboration with NITI Aayog and AWS to develop, build, and support cloud services that can enrich the lives of people in India and around the world. The new NITI Aayog CIC Experience Studio is a powerful example of industry collaboration to accelerate technology solutions for meaningful social impact,” said Prakash Mallya, VP and MD, Sales, Marketing and Communications Group, Intel India.
The NITI Aayog Frontier Technologies CIC was established in October 2020 as part of the AWS Cloud Innovation Centers Global Program. Focusing on tackling the challenges facing India, the CIC recently developed COvAID during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Developed in five days, COvAID provided a platform for consolidating the end-to-end flow of aid received to support COVID-19 affected people, distributing the aid in a transparent manner, and accelerating the speed at which the aid reaches beneficiaries.
More In Tech Governance
The exports of agricultural commodities from March to June 2020 shot up by 23.24 percent on-year to Rs 25,552.7 crores.
As the economy comes to a standstill amid the coronavirus-led lockdown, India’s agriculture sector has taken the baton of economic growth in its hands. The exports of agricultural commodities from March to June 2020 shot up by 23.24 percent on-year to Rs 25,552.7 crores, according to the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare. The government said that self-reliant agriculture is critical for the goal of an Atmanirbhar Bharat and for this, agricultural export is extremely important as besides earning foreign exchange for the country, the exports help farmers, producers, and exporters to take advantage of the wider international market and increase their income.
The surge in exports has also resulted in increased production in the farm sector by increasing coverage area and productivity. The share of India’s agricultural exports and imports in the world agriculture trade in 2017 was 2.27 percent and 1.90 percent, respectively. Even during the difficult time of pandemic lockdown, India took care not to disturb the world food supply chain and continued to export, the government said.
Ministry of Agriculture has prepared a comprehensive action plan for the promotion of Agri trade; the twofold approach focuses on boosting Agri Export with emphasis on value addition and action plan for Import Substitution. Recently, the Agriculture sector has witnessed a series of reforms, giving more choices to the farmers to sell their produce at competitive rates.
To mention a few, the Export strategy focuses on the export promotion of fast-evolving niche markets of Wellness food/ Health-conscious food/nutraceuticals, Development of “Brand India” in campaign mode to help penetration into new foreign markets and of new products which automatically translates into higher value realization, Gulf countries have been identified as focus destination to increase the market share which is a strong market for India though presently India caters to only 10-12% share of their total imports. A product-market matrix has been made containing a list of products of strength that could be expanded in new geographies and a list of known markets which can be introduced with newer products.
At the behest of the Department of Agricultural Cooperation & Farmers’ Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture, product-specific Export Promotion Forums have been created to lead Agri exports to new heights. Each Export Promotion Forum shall be having exporters of the related commodity as its members along with official members representing concerned Ministries/Departments of the Central and State Governments. Chairman APEDA shall be the chairman of each of these forums. The forums will meet at least once every two months, to discuss recommendations on issues pertaining to the export.
The recommendations of the forum will be placed in the product committee / Authority of APEDA. The Forum will keep in close contact with the concerned organization of the Ministry of Agriculture such as MIDH, Extension, NPPO, etc., DGFT, Ministry of Civil Aviation, MoFPI, etc. to further the interest of agricultural export.
