Flipkart to carve out internal artificial intelligence unit AIforIndia

Bengaluru: India's largest online retailer Flipkart is making an ambitious push in the area of artificial intelligence by carving out an internal unit called AIforIndia, which will be overseen by its senior-most business and technology leaders, as it attempts to put machine learning and AI at the core of its business. In an interview, Flipkart co-founder and chairman Sachin Bansal said the e-commerce firm will invest "hundreds of millions of dollars" in the AI initiative over the next few years. Bansal said Flipkart has begun recruiting dozens of AI experts, building infrastructure, striking hardware partnerships and working with top educational institutions, including IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), to make its AI push successful. He also said Flipkart is looking for AI-related acquisitions in India and in the US. In 2015, Flipkart had acquired the F7 Labs in the Silicon Valley to focus on areas such as AI and machine learning.