NEW DELHI — The Central government has released ₹233 crore, or 23.5% of the ₹990 crore total financial outlay approved over a five-year period from FY2023-24 to FY2027-28, to establish three Centres of Excellence (CoE) in artificial intelligence focused on agriculture, healthcare and sustainable cities, according to a written reply in the Rajya Sabha. A fourth centre, an AI Centre of Excellence for Education with a separate outlay of ₹500 crore established at IIT Madras, has so far received ₹43 crore — bringing the combined disbursal across all four centres to roughly ₹276 crore.
The three original AI CoEs, announced in the Union Budget 2023-24 as part of the government's "Make AI in India and Make AI work for India" vision, are led by IIT Ropar (agriculture), IIT Kanpur (healthcare) and IISc Bengaluru (sustainable cities). Government data shows ₹27 crore was released during FY2023-24 and FY2024-25 to consortiums of institutions during a competitive pilot-selection phase. Since then, ₹74.39 crore has gone to IIT Kanpur, ₹69.07 crore to IISc Bengaluru, and ₹62.64 crore to IIT Ropar during FY2025-26 and FY2026-27.
What the Centres Have Built So Far
The Ministry of Education said the four AI CoEs are working with academic institutions, industry and government organisations to develop AI models for sector-specific applications. Cited outputs include machine learning models for automatic speech recognition, optical character recognition, machine translation and text-to-speech systems supporting Indian languages under the Education CoE; crop, pest and disease identification models under the Agriculture CoE; and air pollution attribution and urban flood prediction models under the Sustainable Cities CoE.
A Small Share of a Much Larger AI Infrastructure Push
The four AI CoEs sit within a considerably larger national AI infrastructure effort. Under the IndiaAI Mission, approved in 2024 with a five-year allocation of ₹10,300 crore, the government has built out a common computing facility equipped with 18,693 GPUs — among the most extensive AI compute infrastructures globally — sourced from 10 selected supplier companies, alongside a stated ambition to develop indigenous GPU capability within three to five years. Separately, the Centre has approved 58 AI Centres of Excellence more broadly (a wider, state and sector-distributed initiative distinct from the four flagship national CoEs) along with 543 Data and AI Labs across the country, as part of the IndiaAI Mission's effort to identify and support 762 AI use cases and 686 fellowships nationally.
The gap between approved outlay and released funds — roughly a quarter of the total five-year allocation disbursed so far — reflects the phased, milestone-linked nature of government research funding rather than a stalled programme; the ministry said progress on fund utilisation continues to be monitored against defined output milestones at each institution.
Sector-Specific AI as a Deliberate Government Strategy
The four-centre model reflects a deliberate government choice to concentrate AI research funding in sectors seen as having the broadest public benefit — agriculture, healthcare, urban infrastructure and education — rather than spreading resources across general-purpose AI research alone. That framing aligns with NITI Aayog's October 2025 report, "AI for Inclusive Societal Development," which argued that AI-driven tools could meaningfully boost productivity and resilience for India's roughly 490 million informal workers by expanding access to healthcare, education, skilling and financial inclusion.
Alongside the CoEs, the government has separately established five National Centres of Excellence for Skilling, intended to prepare India's youth with industry-relevant AI skills, and a structured AI training framework for government officials designed to build public-sector AI literacy in line with global benchmarks — reflecting a two-track strategy of building both research capability and workforce-level AI readiness simultaneously.
Why It Matters
For a government betting heavily on AI as a lever for inclusive development under its "Viksit Bharat by 2047" framing, the pace of fund utilisation at these flagship research centres will be closely watched as an early indicator of how effectively India can translate large committed outlays into deployed, sector-specific AI tools — particularly in agriculture and healthcare, where the practical payoff for citizens is most direct and most politically visible.
• The Centre has released ₹276 crore combined across four AI Centres of Excellence, against a nearly ₹1,490 crore five-year approved outlay.
• Three CoEs — agriculture (IIT Ropar), healthcare (IIT Kanpur), sustainable cities (IISc Bengaluru) — have an outlay of ₹990 crore through FY28.
• A fourth CoE for Education at IIT Madras has a separate ₹500 crore outlay, with ₹43 crore released so far.
• The CoEs sit within the broader ₹10,300 crore IndiaAI Mission, which has built an 18,693-GPU compute facility.
• The government has separately approved 58 AI Centres of Excellence and 543 Data and AI Labs nationally.
