Google betting on AI from India

It's no coincidence that at about the time that Google CEO Sundar Pichai has professed the company was moving into an'artificial intelligence first' world, the Internet giant is backing AI start-ups in India to help it achieve that goal. Young ventures that analyse medical data to reduce human error, gather insights to help travellers and provide cooking apps for different culinary needs, are some of the AI companies that Google is nurturing at its'Launchpad Accelerator.' "The pace at which you can solve problems is so much faster when you apply (AI)," said Paul Ravindranath G, program manager, Google India. "We have begun including companies that are meaningfully solving problems... using AI and machine learning." The firm's six-month accelerator programme matches young companies from emerging ecosystems with the best of its people, network and advanced technologies to help scale their products. It also connects them with mentors from top tech firms and venture capitalists in the Silicon Valley, U.S. In return, Google, whose parent company Alphabet Inc. reported a revenue of $90.27 billion in 2016, is hoping that its technology and cloud computing platform gets consumed by these start-ups and they build their innovation on top of them.