This Indian institute just won a $2 million grant from Google to create AI tech for pest control

• Mumbai based-Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence has received a $2 million grant from Google to create AI-based technologies to reduce crop losses.
  
• Google Cloud and AI experts will also provide credit and consulting to Wadhwani Institute, which is among 20 recipients of the grant.
  
• The project by Wadhwani can classify and count pests based on photos of pest traps clicked by farmers.

Mumbai based-Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence has received a $2 million grant from Google to create AI-based technologies that could help reduce crop losses in cotton farming, through integrated pest management.

Apart from this, Google Cloud and AI experts will also provide credit and consulting to Wadhwani Institute, which is among 20 recipients of the grant. Called the "Google AI Impact Challenge," Google invited nonprofits, social enterprises and research institutions to submit ideas on how to use AI to help address societal challenges.

Around 20 organisations would be sharing a $25 million grant by Google for “changing the world with AI.

Wadhwani’s project runs on a basic smartphone. It can classify and count pests based on photos of pest traps clicked by farmers. According to the Institute, the AI program can provide instant and localised advice that would help them in reducing cross loss.


Indian-American tech billionaire brothers Sunil and Romesh Wadhwani founded the Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Mumbai in February 2018 with an idea to dedicate $3 million each year for the next ten years to develop artificial intelligence (AI) for social good.

According to Raghu Dharmaraju, VP Products and Programs, small farmers are dependent on government and other non-profit programs at every step of the crop cycle. We can help millions of farmers by resolving all the systematic challenges in large scale programmes.