Microsoft partners with 10 educational institutes in India to launch AI digital labs

New Delhi: US technology giant, Microsoft has partnered with 10 higher educational institutes in the country to launch artificial intelligence (AI) digital labs. As part of this partnership, these institutes would emerge as learning centres of emerging technologies and solutions.
Some of these institutes include BITS Pilani, BML Munjal University, SRM Institute of Science & Technology, ISB, KL University, among others. This is a three-year programme that the company would be running at these institutes with an intention to collaborate with more such institutes in the country.

"We are in talks with leading institutes and universities and some more collaborations would be in pipeline which would be announced soon," Rohini Srivathsa, national technology officer, Microsoft Corporation India told ET. These also include the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) among others.

Microsoft would provide infrastructure, curriculum, content, access to cloud, AI services and developer support to these institutes. The company would also help in setting up of core AI infrastructure and Internet of things hub and provide other services. Training programmes would include workshops on cloud computing, data sciences, AI and IoT. "This is not part of company's CSR project but part of our plan to build a future ready workforce especially in AI here in India," said Srivathsa. This is one of the first such initiative globally for Microsoft.