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Applied AI in India

India's AI lands first on the machinery of a very large state — railway waitlist prediction, GST evasion detection, a skilling chatbot on WhatsApp — with the ₹10,372 crore IndiaAI Mission behind it.

AI readiness
0.49
Rank 76 of 171 — IMF AI Preparedness Index
On the record
9
entries across 4 industries
National programme
2024
IndiaAI Mission — ₹10,372 crore
National programme

IndiaAI Mission

Announced 2024, ₹10,372 crore (~US$1.2bn). Its pillars are compute capacity, innovation centre, datasets platform, application development, FutureSkills, startup financing, safe and trusted AI.

Services 49.3% · Industry 25.2% · Agriculture 16.2% of gross value added — World Bank, 2025

Kind
Role
9 entries

Education & Training

4

A multilingual AI skilling chatbot runs on WhatsApp, and India has added its first AI-tool qualifications to the national skills framework.

RegulationEducation & TrainingIndia2026

India adds its first AI-tool qualifications to national framework

NCVET placed India's first AI skills qualifications on the National Skills Qualifications Framework in July 2026, recognising NIIT Foundation Awarding Body (Dual). The AI-tool pair are Fundamentals of Digital Productivity with AI Tools, NSQF Level 3, and Fundamentals of Data Management with AI Tools, NSQF Level 4.

Evidence of adoptionEducation & TrainingIndia2026

India's IndiaAI Mission backs AI skilling with a $1.25 billion outlay

India's Cabinet approved the IndiaAI Mission in March 2024: ₹10,371.92 crore (about US$1.25 billion) over five years, with AI skilling among seven pillars. IndiaAI FutureSkills widens AI courses from undergraduate to PhD level and opens Data and AI Labs in Tier 2 and 3 cities.

DeploymentEducation & TrainingIndia2024

India launches a multilingual AI skilling chatbot on WhatsApp

India's Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) launched the Skill India Assistant on 21 July 2025, a multilingual AI skilling chatbot on WhatsApp built on Meta's open-source Llama model. MSDE calls it the first large-scale open-source AI deployment in a national public skilling mission. By February 2026 its Skill India Digital Hub, run with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), counted 1.5 crore (about 15 million) candidates, 7,000 training providers and 68,000 employer and industry partners.

Learner / traineepib.gov.in
Evidence of adoptionEducation & TrainingIndia2022

Only 41% of India's PMKVY-certified trainees were placed in jobs

India's supreme audit institution found skilling scheme placements for just 2.318 million, or 41%, of the 5.614 million candidates certified under Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana's short-term training. The ministry itself blamed the weak job placement on roles picked without skill-gap analysis or market-demand assessment.

Government & Public Sector

3

Indian Railways lifted waitlist-prediction accuracy from 53% to 94%, per the railways, and Andhra Pradesh has modelled GST evasion with AI.

DeploymentGovernment & Public SectorIndia15 Aug 2026

Indian Railways' AI lifts waitlist-prediction accuracy from 53% to 94%

Ministry of Railways / CRISIndia's Ministry of Railways, via its technology arm CRIS, has begun rolling out AI railway reservations to replace the 40-year-old Passenger Reservation System, including forecasts of whether waitlisted tickets will confirm. Indian Railways says the waitlist prediction, introduced earlier in 2026, lifted accuracy from 53% to 94%, unverified independently; about 88% of tickets are already booked digitally.

Rail operationsrepublicworld.com
DeploymentGovernment & Public SectorIndia15 Aug 2026

Andhra Pradesh presents an AI model to detect GST evasion

Andhra Pradesh Commercial Taxes DeptAndhra Pradesh's Commercial Taxes Department has put forward an AI/ML-driven GST model, AI tax evasion detection that also speeds refunds. It is pitched as a way to strengthen the state's GST administration.

DeploymentGovernment & Public SectorIndia11 May 2026

India's Supreme Court launches AI chatbot for court services

Supreme Court of IndiaThe Supreme Court of India has launched Su-Sahayak, an AI court chatbot, alongside a 'One Case, One Data' integrated case management platform. Built by the National Informatics Centre with the Supreme Court Registry, the digital assistant offers court guidance, procedural help and access to judgments, orders, cause lists and case status.

Court registry officialrepublicworld.com

Agriculture & Food

1

The agriculture ministry has launched Bharat-VISTAAR, an AI advisory platform for farmers.

DeploymentAgriculture & FoodIndia17 Feb 2026

India launches AI advisory platform Bharat-VISTAAR for farmers

Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' WelfareUnion Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has launched Bharat-VISTAAR in Rajasthan, bringing real-time, personalised AI farm advisory to farmers. The multilingual platform had been announced in the Union Budget 2026-27.

Finance & Insurance

1

IndiaFirst Life has embedded AI agents across underwriting and claims.

DeploymentFinance & InsuranceIndia27 Aug 2026

IndiaFirst Life embeds AI agents across underwriting and claims

IndiaFirst LifeIndiaFirst Life has chosen Salesforce Agentforce to place AI agents in insurance work across claims processing, customer service and new-business underwriting. The agents review KYC and medical documents, sort and answer service cases and check claims paperwork.

Underwriter / claimssalesforce.com
Latest on the record
  • DeploymentIndiaFirst Life embeds AI agents across underwriting and claimsFinance & Insurance27 Aug 2026salesforce.com
  • DeploymentIndian Railways' AI lifts waitlist-prediction accuracy from 53% to 94%Government & Public Sector15 Aug 2026republicworld.com
  • DeploymentAndhra Pradesh presents an AI model to detect GST evasionGovernment & Public Sector15 Aug 2026blog.saginfotech.com
  • RegulationIndia adds its first AI-tool qualifications to national frameworkEducation & Training2026pib.gov.in
  • Evidence of adoptionIndia's IndiaAI Mission backs AI skilling with a $1.25 billion outlayEducation & Training2026indiaai.gov.in
  • DeploymentIndia launches a multilingual AI skilling chatbot on WhatsAppEducation & Training2024pib.gov.in
  • Evidence of adoptionOnly 41% of India's PMKVY-certified trainees were placed in jobsEducation & Training2022cag.gov.in
Asia-Pacific
Method and sources

Every entry on this page is a named organisation putting AI to work in a real job, taken from the State of Applied AI record. Each one is traced to the report it came from and dated, and where a figure is the organisation’s own the entry says so rather than presenting it as an independent result. Readiness, ecosystem and policy figures, where shown, are attributed on the card to the body that published them.

The record is maintained continuously by the Industrial Research Unit of the Straits Institute for Applied AI: entries are added as they are found and verified, not on a schedule, and nothing is published without an open source behind it. It currently holds 1114 entries across 249 countries.