RMSI Cropalytics, CDAC Kolkata win Telangana AI Mission’s grand challenge

The challenge provided innovators operating within India with an opportunity to assist the Government of Telangana in helping farmers through specific use-cases

Hyderabad: The Telangana AI Mission (T-AIM), an initiative by the Government of Telangana, powered by Nasscom, announced RMSI Cropalytics and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) Kolkata as the winners of the first edition of the Agri AI Grand Challenge.

The winning teams will receive a cash prize of Rs 4 lakh and the opportunity to pilot their solution with the Government of Telangana. Five organisations were chosen as finalists from nearly 50 submissions comprising startups, academia, and companies.

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The award ceremony was attended by Jayesh Ranjan, principal secretary, I&C and IT, Government of Telangana, Dr Praveen Rao Velchala, vice-chancellor, Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University (PJTSAU), and Rama Devi Lanka, director-Emerging Technologies Wing and Officer on Special Duty ITE&C, Government of Telangana. The five finalists also participated in the event.

Earlier this year, the T-AIM launched the Agri AI Grand Challenge to innovators around the country. The challenge provided innovators operating within India with an opportunity to assist the Government of Telangana in helping farmers by working on three use-cases. These include precision farming for improving yield, real-time price discovery and volume management at e-marketplaces and farmer lending using farm/output backed credit risk assessment.

At the award ceremony, Jayesh Ranjan, principal secretary, Government of Telangana, congratulating all the finalists and the winners said, “Since agriculture is a priority sector for the State, the innovative use of emerging technologies that benefit farmers is a key agenda item for us. The AI startups selected in this grand challenge will get an opportunity to pilot their solutions in Telangana. The Department of Agriculture and the Agriculture University will provide mentorship and domain knowledge to improvise the solution.”

Each team had six weeks to work on the use-case. A highly experienced jury comprising government representatives, technology professionals, academia and subject matter experts in agriculture evaluated the entries based on criteria such as problem identification, innovation, operational scalability, roadmap ahead, team, unique value proposition, and social impact.

Debjani Ghosh, president, Nasscom said, “The Telangana AI Mission is committed towards development of the AI ecosystem within the State of Telangana. Considering the importance of agriculture for the State’s economy, we hope that endeavours such as this will help improve farmers’ incomes.”

The event was supported by PJTSAU, IIT Hyderabad, Research and Innovation Circle of Hyderabad, Amazon AWS and Cluzters.ai. During the event, the Telangana AI Mission announced that it will continue to create opportunities for innovators to contribute to solutions for the society.

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