AI Innovation Challenge

The AI Innovation Challenge is the centre's flagship call for AI and deep-tech startups. Departments of the Gujarat government and private companies publish specific operational problems as use cases, and startups from anywhere in India apply against one of them. Each use case is marked open or closed on its own, so the call is effectively always running with a changing list. Recent open use cases have covered a stakeholder and grievance assistant for the state real estate regulator and examination scheduling and a multilingual recruitment voice bot for the state recruitment board; closed ones have covered fire-safety plan validation, emergency call analysis and object detection in port cargo unloading.

What you get

• The chance to build a working solution for a state government department through a paid proof of concept.
• A one-year membership of the AI CoE Startup Accelerator Program.
• An introduction to the department or company that owns the use case, which settles commercial terms with you directly.
• Mentoring sessions on your proposal from technical and business experts before the final evaluation.

Who can apply

• Innovators and mature startups anywhere in India with deep-tech capability and a market-ready digital solution.
• Incorporated as a private limited company, or registered as a partnership firm or a limited liability partnership.
• Within ten years of the date of incorporation, and below the published turnover ceiling in any previous financial year.
• Working towards innovation or improvement of existing products, services or processes, with the potential to create jobs or wealth.
• An entity formed by splitting up or reconstructing an existing business does not qualify.

How selection works: startups register, take part in engagement sessions with the use-case owners, get mentoring on their proposals, and are then scored by a jury. The published weights are solution relevance and technical capability at twenty percent each, past experience and innovation at fifteen percent each, scalability and implementation readiness at ten percent each, and security and privacy compliance and a realistic cost and timeline at five percent each. Winners move to a proof of concept and then deployment.

How to apply: open the use case you want on the centre's use-case platform and apply there. Each listing carries its own apply button and its own open or closed status.