Google has unveiled new AI focussed partnerships in India to boost healthcare, sustainability, and agriculture.
The tech giant’s latest collaborations include a project with Forus Health and AuroLab to expand diabetic retinopathy screenings, a partnership with Saahas Zero Waste to support India’s circular economy, and the release of its Agricultural Landscape Understanding (ALU) API to developers.
These announcements follow the 10th edition of Google for India event, emphasising the company’s commitment to making AI impactful across the country.
“At Google, we’re not just building AI but shaping a future where AI benefits everyone,” said Dr. Manish Gupta, research director of Google DeepMind, speaking at the roundtable at Google’s Research lab in Bangalore. He highlighted Google’s focus on areas such as language understanding, healthcare, and sustainability to address India’s challenges, emphasising how AI is poised to solve some of society’s biggest issues.
For healthcare, Google has licensed its diabetic retinopathy AI model to healthcare providers and health-tech partners Forus Health and AuroLab in India, and Perceptra in Thailand, to support approximately 6 million AI-assisted screenings for diabetic retinopathy’
Sunny Virmani, Group Product Manager for Health AI Research at Google, expressed Google’s commitment to using AI to eradicate preventable blindness. “We’re expanding our efforts with partners like Forus Health, AuroLab, and Perceptra to ensure that timely intervention reaches even remote communities,” said Virmani.
K. Chandrasekhar, CEO of Forus Health, and Mr. R.D. Sriram, Managing Director of AuroLabs, praised the partnership for bringing AI-powered eye care to the forefront. “We’re confident of impacting millions of lives,” said Chandrasekhar.
In sustainability, Google is collaborating with Saahas Zero Waste (SZW) to use its AI model CircularNet for waste management. CircularNet, trained on global datasets, is helping to improve plastic waste sorting and recycling efficiency. In a pilot, SZW saw an 85% accuracy rate in plastic waste detection, predicting a 10-12% improvement in revenue from higher-quality recyclable materials.
“We believe in AI’s power to build a more sustainable future,” said Sujit Sanjeev, Lead for CircularNet at Google. Arun Murugesh of SZW added, “Google’s CircularNet is playing a crucial role in improving resource recovery and supporting India’s circular economy.”
Google has also opened access to its Agricultural Landscape Understanding (ALU) Research API, which combines satellite imagery with AI to provide insights at the farm level. The API aims to help India’s agricultural sector with data-driven decision-making, optimising farm management, and addressing productivity challenges.
Alok Talekar, Engineering Lead at Google DeepMind India, noted that this API, developed in collaboration with Indian researchers and government agencies, could help mitigate the pressures faced by the agricultural sector. “The ALU API, developed through collaborations between Google’s AnthroKrishi team and researchers and state and union governments across India, reflects our commitment to empowering India’s agriculture ecosystem.”
These partnerships reflect Google’s ongoing commitment to harnessing AI for social good in India, with future collaborations expected to further expand the role of AI in driving sustainable growth and innovation across sectors.
