India Pauses New AI Model Proposals After High Response to IndiaAI Mission

Pause on accepting new proposals under IndiaAI after April 22

The government will pause accepting new proposals under the Rs 10,000 crore IndiaAI Mission after April 22 due to high response volumes. The deadline for phase 3 has been extended to April 22. Over 190 proposals were received in earlier rounds, including LLMs and SLMs, which are under evaluation.The government will pause accepting fresh proposals for building homegrown AI models under the Rs 10,000 core IndiaAI Mission after concluding the third round of applications, for which it has extended the deadline to April 22 from April 15. After April 22, new submissions will be put on hold until further notice, a notice on the IndiaAI website stated, adding that any reopening announcements will be updated on the portal. The government had received close to 190 applications till the second round, ET reported on March 20. These are currently under evaluation. "We continue to receive a high volume of applications in the ongoing phase 3 (16th March to present). In light of the large volume of responses received till now, it has been decided to pause acceptance of new applications," the statement said. "To ensure all applications that are in process are accommodated, the deadline for submission for phase 3 has been extended by 7 days," it said. The call for proposals for Indian AI models was launched on January 30. The government received 67 proposals in the first phase between January 30 and February 15. Out of these, 22 proposals were for large language models (LLM) or multimodal models and 45 were for small language models (SLM). In the second phase between February 16 and March 15, it received 120 applications of which 36 were for LLMs and 84 were for SLMs.

Govt To "Pause" Proposals For Building AI Models Post April 22

In January, the centre invited applications from startups, and research organizations to build an indigenous AI foundational AI model trained on Indian datasets The government will "pause" accepting fresh proposals for building an indigenous foundational artificial intelligence (AI) model after April 22. In a statement, IndiaAI Mission said that it has extended the deadline for submitting applications under the third phase to April 22 from April 15 previously due to the "large volume of proposals" received. Thereafter, the nodal AI body will put on hold any new applications. "We continue to receive a high volume of applications in the ongoing phase 3 (16th March to present). In light of the large volume of responses received till now, it has been decided to pause acceptance of new applications... To ensure all applications that are in process are accommodated, the deadline for submission for phase 3 has been extended by 7 days," read the statement. IndiaAI Mission noted that it has so far received 197 applications for building a homegrown AI model. In the first phase, 67 proposals were received, out of which 22 were for large language models (LLMs) while the remaining 45 were for small language models (SLMs). In Phase 2, the Centre received 120 applications. Of these, 36 were for LLMs while 84 were for building SLMs. "We appreciate the applicants for their interest in this initiative. The IndiaAI team is actively evaluating the received proposals and will continue to give regular updates on the same," said IndiaAI Mission in a statement. This comes four months after the Centre invited applications from institutions, startups, and research organizations to build an indigenous AI foundational AI model trained on Indian datasets. The project is part of the larger INR 10,370 Cr IndiaAI Mission. While inviting applications, the Mission said that the project will look to develop a scalable platform that can demonstrate capabilities to address India-specific challenges and opportunities across sectors. As part of this, the Centre has expressed willingness to offer both equity-based funding as well as compute credits for the selected entity(s) that will undertake the task. This follows the union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, in February, saying that the country would build its own foundational AI model in the next 10 months. He also said then that India would be able to develop its own high-end graphics processing unit (GPU) in the next three to five years.