Puducherry is set to get its own Artificial Intelligence Centre of Excellence (AI CoE), a project aimed at strengthening the Union Territory’s AI ecosystem, promoting innovation and positioning Puducherry as a technology hub.

Proposed under the India AI Mission, the center will support research, AI adoption in government departments, and its use by public sector undertakings.

The Directorate of Information Technology (DIT) has issued an Expression of Interest (EoI) inviting corporate, academic and research organisations to partner in setting up the centre. The proposed AI CoE will cost ₹20 crore, with the funding model fixed at 40:40:20. Under this arrangement, the Government of India and the Union Territory of Puducherry will contribute 40% each, while the industry or academic partner will provide the remaining 20%.

According to an official, “The centre is likely to come up at Puducherry Technological University or the MSME Centre over about 12,000 square feet. The facility is expected to include GPU servers, high-end desktops, laptops, AI tools and dedicated network connectivity. It will also serve as a platform for applied research, AI skilling, startup incubation and implementation of AI-based solutions in government departments.”

The centre is designed to build AI computing infrastructure, develop innovative AI products, consolidate datasets needed for AI applications and promote ethical AI practices. It will also focus on upskilling, reskilling and advanced skilling, while encouraging entrepreneurship in AI and other emerging technologies, he said.

A wide range of use cases has been identified across departments, including health, agriculture, tourism, fisheries, education, urban development, smart governance and excise. In health, the centre will work on diagnosis support, epidemic prediction and hospital resource planning while in agriculture, it will focus on crop pattern analysis, crop survey, pest detection, soil monitoring and satellite or drone image analysis.

Official sources said the initiative is intended to go beyond research and function as a practical tool for public service delivery and data-driven decision-making. It is also expected to support tourism crowd management, fisheries-related prediction tools, personalised skilling in education, traffic optimisation in urban development and grievance or fraud detection in smart governance.

The centre has set annual targets that include incubation of 24 startups, development of 30 prototypes or products, creation of 300 jobs, conduct of eight hackathons and production of 20 research publications.