We are well aware of the Achilles' Heel of AI, training data on which the model is built, it has the power to make or break the AI model and the subsequent decisions it takes. My previous article highlighted the importance of data annotation services in creating well-labelled training data for enterprise AI models. The article also talks about the building blocks of successful service delivery in the annotation space and the business models prevalent globally. Let us in this article try to get a deeper understanding of the India story with respect to the data annotation landscape and a few trends that are driving the India market. The data annotation market serviced by India in FY20 is USD 250 Mn and the cost billed to the client for any project is based on the combination of the kinds of use cases, number of data items to be labelled, complexity and type of annotation required.

Knowledge Lens, a relatively new company, participated as a Silver Sponsor at ARC's India Forum, Driving Digital Transformation in Industry and Cities. As a first-time participant, the Forum provided an ideal opportunity for the company to showcase its offerings. Started in Bangalore five years ago with no external funding, the company's vision is to build information technology products indigenously and provide gainful employment. Today, it has offices in the US and over 1,500 customers globally. The company's focus is on accelerating actionable insights from enterprise data using artificial intelligence (AI), Big Data analytics, cloud, Internet of Things (IoT), and blockchain technologies.

ThoughSpot, an enterprise search and analytics startup is already making waves in the enterprise. Former Nutanix leader Sunil Mahale joined Thoughtspot as the VP of APJ on November 12, 2018, and the company has set its eyes on the India market. Amit Prakash, Co-founder and CTO at ThoughtSpot, mentioned, "Right now everyone is jumping on the machine learning bandwagon and that is the competitive edge. If one does not have that, the competition will kill you. We knew how to build this technology and wanted to bring it to enterprises. We certainly expect to do well in India. And we have started making the right investments to build the business here."