Dr Ranjit Nair (PhD AI), CEO and Founder of Germin8, a Digital Intelligence Company for his expectations of the pre-budget.

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"One of the biggest areas where countries are vying for dominance is Artificial Intelligence, which is expected to have a huge impact not only in commerce but also in areas like health, national security, cybersecurity, food security, education, and global warming. Unfortunately, countries like USA and China are leaving India behind in terms of AI research, AI entrepreneurship and government investment in AI.

The following are some things that the government could do:

1.    AI Grand Challenges: The government can announce AI grand challenges that are open to teams from academia and industry that involve solves an important problem for India. The government’s role in this would be to give a crisp problem definition, provide access to the data and of course provide a good cash prize. Such AI grand challenges will result in important problems getting solved,  new startups and jobs, and capture the nation’s imagination and give an impetus to the field of AI.

2.    Make it easier to access capital: One of the biggest challenges that startups face is early-stage funding. The government could announce a fund on the likes of Singapore’s Temasek that will invest only in early-stage Indian AI startups. Also, the government could announce lower long term capital gain’s tax for investing in AI-based startups. This will encourage more angel investment into AI start-ups.

3.    Improve AI talent in the country: While there are a lot of engineers being produced in India, we still lag behind other countries in terms of the number of AI PhDs and AI research. The government should make more research grants available for AI research and should also offer incentives to institutes that invest in AI training.

4.    Ease of doing Business: Government focus should be on bringing policies that encourage AI companies. There should be less red tape, more freedom from the government departments so that entrepreneurs can be focused on building solutions without unnecessary distractions."

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Ranjit completed his PhD in Computer Science with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Southern California in 2004. His thesis focused on decision making in multi-agent teams involved in collaborative tasks in uncertain environments, like robots tasked with rescuing people in the aftermath of natural disasters. Post his doctorate, he worked as Senior Research Scientist with Honeywell Labs in Minneapolis, where he continued his work in developing algorithms for planning and decision making in the face of imprecise and incomplete information. 

He returned to India at the end of 2006 to be a tech entrepreneur and to fulfil a desire to see India become known as not just as an exporter of IT services but also for world-class software products and innovation. With this goal in mind, he founded Germin8 along with his father, Raj Nair, who is a successful strategy consultant and serial entrepreneur. Today, Germin8 helps many large companies across sectors like financial services; automotive, FMCG and