During our recent visit to People+ai, we were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves in a space filled with AI engineers, volunteers, and researchers, surrounded by walls adorned with AI-generated art. This was all in line with the philosophy of ‘What can (AI) do for you?’ – as stated in Tanuj Bhojwani’s LinkedIn tagline. Bhojwani, under whose leadership People+ai is championing AI for India, is addressing real challenges at scale through various initiatives and government partnerships. He believes that AI has the potential to make a tangible difference in people’s lives and is determined to harness its capabilities to help a billion people.
People+ai was born out of the EkStep Foundation, founded by Nandan Nilekani, Rohini Nilekani, and Shankar Maruwada, in June last year. This community-driven effort aims to use AI to help a billion people and is being led by Bhojwani, who has been an investor, consultant, and co-founder in the past. Bhojwani emphasized the importance of building Indic language models and their use cases within the country. He pointed out that most of the Indian population is yet to experience the convenience of using the internet due to the country’s low literacy rate. Therefore, it is crucial to take AI to the grassroots level and do it in a frugal manner, in line with India’s approach.
Currently, People+ai is working on projects like Jan Ki Baat, Sthaan, and Open Cloud Compute (OCC) to make this a reality. Bhojwani believes that India will face unique problems that require unique solutions, and it is up to the country to solve them. He also stressed the importance of not copying the West for ideas and instead creating our own solutions, just like how Indian startups like Zepto, Instagmart, and Blinkit have shaken up the market dominated by Amazon.
Nilekani, the co-founder and non-executive chairman of Infosys, has previously stated that just like how India benefited from Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), Aadhaar, and UPI, AI holds similar transformative potential. However, Nilekani also believes that AI needs to be used with appropriate safety and guardrails, which is the exact principle that People+ai follows. Bhojwani explained that when it comes to infrastructural pieces and policy, People+ai steps in to ensure that AI is used responsibly.
In conclusion, Bhojwani and People+ai are determined to make India the AI use case capital of the world. They believe that building AI in India is a game that is very different from the rest of the world, and it is up to us to lead the way in using AI for the betterment of society.
