NVIDIA strengthens artificial intelligence innovation in India

The Emerging Companies Summit (ECS) showcased 12 start-ups with exciting solutions.

The NVIDIA Emerging Companies Summit India, which was used as the platform for launching the NVIDIA Inception Program, is the only event in India aimed at start-ups specialising in artificial intelligence. The event brought together 12 visionary start-ups in AI, virtual reality, autonomous vehicles and robotics with leading tech investors, including Rajan Anandan, Vice President for South East Asia and India at Google.

Emerging Companies Summit (ECS) showcased 12 start-ups with exciting solutions ranging from an app which recognises food ingredients and suggests recipes to another which observes inventory in brand coolers at retail outlets and automatically reorders supplies. The audience was a mixture of start-ups, investors, companies and media.

Healthcare start-up Qure.ai won the Social Innovation Award at the Emerging Companies Summit. The Best of Show award was presented to intelligent HR solutions start-up Edge Networks. Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director - South Asia, NVIDIA said, “Artificial Intelligence has gone from science fiction to reality thanks to a new computing model: graphics processing unit (GPU)-accelerated deep learning. We believe the next generation of breakthroughs in technology and business will be driven by the AI start-up community. Young India’s aspirations, ideas and potential are global in scale, and we are excited to amplify the imagination and intelligence of the country’s brightest minds through the Inception Program and the Emerging Companies Summit.”

Inception provides innovative GPU start-ups with key support to help grow their businesses and bring revolutionary products to market faster. Custom benefits include access to:

• The latest NVIDIA deep learning technologies - Early access to the latest GPU hardware, as well as the NVIDIA Deep Learning SDK, the NVIDIA DIGITS deep learning GPU training System, the NVIDIA GPU Inference Engine and more
• Deep learning expertise - Access to NVIDIA's deep learning experts and world-class engineering teams, which include computational mathematicians who specialise in designing algorithms for GPU-accelerated computing platforms.
• NVIDIA's global network - customers, partners and suppliers, and NVIDIA marketing reach.
• Technical training - Online and in-person courses via the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute.
• Funding - Qualified companies may be eligible for funding through NVIDIA's GPU Ventures Program.

Following day was the inauguration of GTCx India where GTCx India on December 6, 2016 ran to a sell out audience of more than 1,400 attendees. NVIDIA’s Dr. Steven Parker, Eminent Scientist and Padma Bhushan awardee Dr Vijay Bhatkar delivered Keynotes on the revolution in AI and Integrative Computing respectively, to a standing room only crowd. This was followed by tracks on Deep Learning, HPC and Professional Visualisation, NVIDIA VR Village experiences, sponsor booths, the evening GTCx mixer and much more, with the buzz running to well over 8 p.m.

NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Institute (DLI) Training ran to a full house for all three classes (introduction to deep learning, object detection and network deployment. The very interactive audience had NVIDIA expert Abel Brown teaching and fielding questions from 9 a.m. till 7 p.m. The Keynote live feed was viewed extensively online and GTCx India was successful in bringing the Indian GPU community together on one platform to share knowledge, learn and network.