10 standout start-ups taking an AI leap in India

The rise of a technology has Bill Gates issuing warnings of an apocalypse. It's Artificial Intelligence or AI, an idea whose time has come--it is incubating in science labs and being deployed by start-ups and industrial units alike. Why are Gates and Co. worried? Specifically, it's over machine learning, an early form of AI that has in recent years become mainstream, causing both delight and nervousness among AI experts and technology companies. AI involves building computers capable of taking smart decisions by themselves, the way humans do. Machine learning and various other sub-fields such as deep learning are the means to achieve AI. Google announced this week that it is rethinking all its products to base them on AI; it has created a new unit called Google.ai to facilitate this shift. The revival of interest in machine learning has been driven by a confluence of factors, such as the massive increase in computing power, emergence of neural networks (connected transistors that replicate the structure of neurons in the human brain) and the easy availability of vast amounts of data, thanks to the Internet. Compared to AI leaders in the Silicon Valley and China, India is a laggard but even here, nearly 300 start-ups are using some form of AI, according to Tracxn, a start-up tracker. Among dedicated AI-only Indian start-ups, 23% are working on providing solutions to multiple industries, 15% are in e-commerce, 12% in healthcare, 11% in education, 10% in financial services, and the rest in fields such as retail and logistics, according to a 2017 report by Kalaari Capital, a venture capital firm. Internet companies tap machine learning techniques for a range of uses--to recommend products for you, for instance, or to predict where cabs should be placed so that when you open your cab-hailing app, there's one a couple of minutes' drive away. Healthcare start-ups use AI to help hospitals make speedy and accurate blood reports and medical diagnoses, saving lives. Others get fashion brands and retailers to buy the right quantities of stock.