From Aadhaar to AI: EkStep Foundation’s Role in India's Digital Evolution

Shankar Maruwada is the CEO and Co-founder of EkStep Foundation. In this insightful talk, he presents the transformative power of technology and its potential to uplift society on a national scale.

Established in 2015 by Nandan Nilekani, Rohini Nilekani, and Shankar Maruwada, the EkStep Foundation has been at the forefront of supporting digital public infrastructure initiatives like Aadhaar and UPI, impacting over a billion lives in India.

This discussion is crucial as it highlights the role of AI in bridging India’s linguistic diversity, ensuring better access to opportunities, and enhancing the quality of life for millions. Shankar shares EkStep’s journey, starting with two fundamental questions: How can AI bridge India’s diverse languages to improve access to opportunities? And can India’s successful digital public infrastructure models be reapplied to AI?

Here are a few key highlights from the talk:

AI for Bharat and Open AI Stack: Learn how EkStep began supporting AI for Bharat in 2020, creating an open-source AI stack to democratize AI tools, data models, and interfaces.

BHASINI – The National Language Translation Mission: Discover EkStep’s partnership with the Government of India in 2021 to launch BHASINI, an Indic language DPI leveraging AI for Bharat’s open AI stack.

Jugalbandi Project: Hear about the rapid development of Jugalbandi in 2022, a solution integrating AI for Bharat’s OpenStack, BHASINI’s DPI, and ChatGPT’s APIs to create a revolutionary conversational interface.

People+ai: Understand the concept behind People+ai and how technology should unite and serve people, fostering innovation and inclusion.

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by People+ai

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