Puducherry plans AI Center of Excellence

Pondicherry is set to get its own Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence (AI CoE). This is a project aimed at strengthening the Union Territory’s AI ecosystem, fostering innovation and positioning Pondicherry as a technology hub.

Proposed under the India AI Mission, the center will support research, AI implementation in government sectors, and use of AI by public sector undertakings.

The Directorate General of Information Technology (DIT) has issued an expression of interest (EoI) inviting companies, academics and research institutions to collaborate in establishing the centre. The cost of the proposed AI CoE is Rs 2,000 crore and the funding model is fixed at 40:40:20. Under the arrangement, the Government of India and the Union Territory of Puducherry will each contribute 40%, while industry or academic partners will provide the remaining 20%.

According to an official, “The center is likely to be built at the Pondicherry Institute of Technology or MSME Center, which is around 12,000 square feet. The facility will include GPU servers, high-end desktops, laptops, AI tools and dedicated network connectivity. It will also serve as a platform for applied research, AI skill learning, startup incubation and deployment of AI-based solutions in government sectors.”

The center is designed to build AI computing infrastructure, develop innovative AI products, integrate datasets needed for AI applications, and promote ethical AI practices. It will also focus on upskilling, reskilling and advanced skill acquisition, while encouraging entrepreneurship in AI and other emerging technologies, he said.

A wide range of use cases have been identified across sectors, including health, agriculture, tourism, fisheries, education, urban development, smart governance, and excise tax. In the health sector, the center will focus on diagnostic support, epidemic forecasting, and hospital resource planning, while in the agricultural sector, it will focus on crop analysis, crop surveys, pest detection, soil monitoring, and satellite and drone image analysis.

Officials say the initiative aims to go beyond research and serve as a practical tool for public service delivery and data-driven decision-making. It is also expected to support tourist crowd management, fishing-related predictive tools, personalized skills in education, traffic optimization in urban development, and complaint and fraud detection in smart governance.

The center has set annual goals such as incubating 24 startups, developing 30 prototypes or products, creating 300 jobs, conducting eight hackathons, and producing 20 research publications.