‘Building AI models from ground up makes you competitive in the long run’: BharatGen’s CEO Rishi Bal
A year after being launched by a consortium led by IIT Bombay as the country’s first government-backed sovereign AI initiative, BharatGen secured over Rs 900 crore in funding by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). As the concept of ‘sovereignty’ in AI catches further steam, CEO of the non-profit, Rishi Bal in an interview with Poulomi Chatterjee, spoke at length about how the AI terrain is changing, why India shouldn’t distill AI models like China and what is next for BharatGen. Excerpts:
