Telangana Emerges as Global AI Hub with 1,774 Research Publications

Hyderabad: Telangana has made substantial contributions to artificial intelligence (AI) research, with an impressive 1,774 AI-related publications between 2011 and 2022, according to a report, "State of Artificial Intelligence Ecosystem in Telangana," that the government unveiled on Monday.
It said that Telangana's strength lay in robotics and computer vision, contributing to 61 per cent of total patent filings, out of total 532 AI-related patents filed in 2021-22.

The work done by institutes in Telangana has been recognised by SCImago and Computer Science Ranking popularly known as CS rankings.The SCImago institutions ranking data showed that 89 per cent of research in India was contributed by universities, which has also been a trend globally as per Stanford's AI Index Report.

As per SCImago Institutions Rankings 2022, six universities from Telangana were ranked in the top 1,000 globally for research publications in computer science. IIIT-Hyderabad was ranked 508 and IIT-Hyderabad 552. Other institutes were NIT-Warangal (638), University of Hyderabad (754), Osmania University (761), JNTU-Hyderabad (773).

According to CS ranking, 1,774 publications were made in AI areas between 2011 and 2022. Of them, IIIT-H published 177 papers and IIT-H 65, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of an estimated 31 per cent each.
While IIIT-H has been contributing to research in computer vision and natural language processing (NLP) fields, IIT-H has core strength in ML and data mining fields. As per CS rankings, nearly 35 per cent of computer vision publications and 73 per cent of robotics publications in India originate from the faculty in Telangana, the report noted.

Telangana's strong academic research and development (R&D) is supplemented by investments in research centres in Hyderabad from stalwarts in the tech industry, such as Microsoft, Google, NVIDIA, Intel, Kore.ai, MassMutual, Hexagon and Experian.

Starting with 42 start-ups in August 2021, the Telangana AI Mission, through its Revv Up programme, is supporting 142 by providing access to market, funding, mentorship, and state-of-the-art AI computing infrastructure.

The Telangana government invested in the second phase of T-Hub, with an aim to incubate next-generation of start-ups. The facility will support over 2,000 start-ups under one roof with a total built-up area of 5,82,689 sft.

As of June 2023, T-Hub has impacted over 2,500 entrepreneurs and witnessed funding of $1.9 billion for start-ups since inception, the report said. It was observed that nearly 25 per cent of the start-ups functioning in Telangana were concentrated in healthcare and education.

The report curated by the Telangana AI Mission (T-AIM) with the assistance of the industry body Nasscom highlighted Telangana’s rise as a global AI powerhouse. It accentuated the convergence of cutting-edge research, diverse talent, robust infrastructure, and strategic partnerships, the report said.