Tech3 | Nandini takes dairy wars to national capital; Infosys sees demand for small language models; and more – DairyScoop

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In today’s newsletter:

• Nandini takes dairy wars to national capital
• Infosys sees demand for small language models
• AI safety, semiconductors on India-EU agenda

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Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF), which markets its dairy products under the Nandini brand, is all set to introduce its fresh milk and curd to Delhi’s dairy market, currently dominated by giants like Mother Dairy and Amul.

• Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah will launch Nandini milk and curd products in the national capital on November 21

To support this expansion, KMF recently floated a tender for the transportation of milk through insulated road tankers from the Mandya Milk Union to Delhi.

“We have conducted trial runs that took 54 hours by road. The trials were successful, with the milk quality maintained throughout,” a senior KMF official said.

Alongside its expansion into Delhi, Nandini is also launching a new product in Bengaluru: a ready-to-use idli and dosa batter. 

• Packaged in a blue 900-gram pouch, the batter can make up to 18 idlis or 12–14 dosas

KMF plans to expand distribution to other cities after assessing the response in Bengaluru.

Find out more

Many clients of India’s second-largest IT company, Infosys, have approached it to develop Small Language Models (SLM) tailored to their needs, AI head Balakrishna D.R said.

• Last month, the IT giant launched two SLMs built on the Nvidia AI stack

SLMs are machine learning algorithms trained on smaller, more focused datasets tailored to a particular task or domain.

The IT major has plans to make its foundational SLMs available as a service to businesses that can build solutions on top of them.

• Further, Infosys has also developed industry blueprints for 23 different sectors on data strategy, responsible AI adoption, and scalable platforms

Also read: AI hits a speed bump: Why the next big thing isn’t coming so fast

Some quarters in the tech world often raise the question of how relevant IT services companies will be in a dynamic landscape. Answering them, Balakrishna said:

• Opportunity is ripe for Infosys to help the entire world in AI, with love from India
• AI presents a significant opportunity for the Indian IT industry given its enterprise customer base

Dig deeper

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) led by secretary S Krishnan will discuss responsible AI, digital public infrastructure, skilling, and semiconductors with EU counterparts next week.  

• The India-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC) was launched in April 2022 following decisions by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen

In the bilateral meeting India and the EU are also expected to discuss collaborations in skilling, semiconductors, digital public infrastructure and so on.

• These meetings will take place under the aegis of one of the three TTC working groups —  Strategic Technologies, Digital Governance, and Digital Connectivity

• The other two groups are: Green and Clean Energy Technologies and Resilient Value Chains, Trade, and Investment

A Semiconductor MoU was signed on November 21, 2023, marking a big step in chip collaboration

• A quantum computing workshop took place in June 2023 at C-DAC Pune, focused on cutting-edge computing tech.  

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