Innovation Challenge Fund (ICF) d.com



Innovation Challenge Fund (ICF)Concept Note Template1.Name/ Organisation Dr. K. T. Deepak, Asst. Professor, IIIT DharwadProf. S. R. M. Prasanna, Professor and Dean R & D, IIT DharwadMr. Atul Dixit, Director, Express AnalyticsDr. Uma Mudenagudi, Dean R & D, KLE Tech. UniversityDr. S. R. Nirmala, Assoc. Professor, KLE Tech. University2.Email address / Phone numberdeepak@iiitdwd.ac.in - 9900456936prasanna@iitdh.ac.in - 9954008138atul@ - 9822055442 uma@kletech.ac.in - 9343392667 nirmala.s@kletech.ac.in - 99575766383.Title of Projectv-Sante4.Application for ICF ClusterAI/Data Science, Karnataka5.Co-Members of the Consortium *(Type – Indian Academia, Indian Business, International Academia, International Business, Indian non-commercial organisation, International non-commercial organisation, Other - specify)* Information not mandatory for the concept note stage.#OrganizationType1.Indian Institute of Technology DharwadIndian Academia2.Express AnalyticsIndian Business3.KLE Technological UniversityIndian Academia4.Indian Institute of Information Technology DharwadIndian Academia6.If you do not already have agreed consortium members, please indicate here the kind of partners you would like to hear from. International Academia and International Business7. Are you content for us to publish your concept note on our web platform in order to encourage potential consortium members to reach out to you? Yes8.Funding Requested (up to ?250k)?250k9.Co-funding provided (if any) and sourceNo10.Please summarise your Innovation Challenge Fund research project in one sentence.350 character limitv-Sante, “v” means voice and video, while the word “Sante” in the Kannada language means a local community market; this enables local vendors to market and help advertise their products at e-commerce platforms in spoken Kannada using Artificial Intelligence technologies as Automatic Speech Recognition, Machine Translation, and Computer Vision.11.Please describe your project further. What problem does your pilot seek to address? Who are the potential beneficiaries and other stakeholders? What are the inputs and activities, and what are the outputs? What does success look like after 12 months of funded research? How will your solution reach the market place? 2500 character limitProblem StatementKannada is a language spoken largely in the southern state of Karnataka. The total population of Karnataka state is around 64 million people. Karnataka is one of the largest states in India. Many items are produced, manufactured, handcrafted, and assembled locally in Karnataka. For example, Mysore silk, Dharwad peda, Coorg green cardamom, appemidi mango, Ghulegudd Khan fabric, ilkal sarees, Sandur lambani embroidery, and many more. Due to the language barrier, vendors still rely on the conventional form of selling. Hence, this limits the vendors selling ability and resists their reach to pan India and the global market. If such vendors get connected to e-commerce platforms using mobile phones and host their products, there will be a greater reach to markets.Beneficiaries and Stake HoldersThe beneficiaries are local vendors who produce unique items in Karnataka and existing e-commerce companies like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra and others. Also, this further helps increase employment in Tier 2, Tier 3, and the rural region of Karnataka.?Inputs, activities, and outputsThe proposal consists of an android based application that essentially helps local vendors to take video shots of the produce.?The application measures the background noise levels and recommends that the user record the video in a relatively quiet background. Similarly, illumination quality recommendations to get better video quality and any such features.?The video shots are transferred to a backend cloud server. The speech (Automatic Speech Recognition and Machine Translation) and computer vision modules help summarize the video shots in the English language in terms of product name, description, keywords, price, and the available quantity.?The textual content derived from these Artificial Intelligence modules will be interfaced with the existing e-commerce APIs.The customer’s order is notified to vendors using Machine Translation and Text to Speech Synthesis modules.Vendors pack the products, and eventually, e-commerce companies bring them to the ambit of supply chain management.DeliverableProof of concept (POC) will be ready in 12 months. Existing modules of ASR, MT, TTS, and Computer Vision modules will be integrated for POC. The POC needs further field testing and tuning of different modules. ?Market ReachThe industrial partner, Express Analytics, will develop the product from POC. The application will integrate with existing e-commerce platforms.? ? ?12.What is ‘technological’ about your proposed solution and why might this be appropriate to the challenge areas?1000 character limitThe technological solution to realize the concept is: a. Development of Android application with necessary recommendations for video recording.b. Creation of speech database in the Kannada language for speech recognition and TTS and development.c. Spoken language understanding and summarization for product description and tagging.d. Right frame selection from video shots, enhancement, and object tagging using computer vision-based techniques. e. Text language translation from Kannada to the English language, interface it to an existing e-commerce platform.The estimated market size of India’s retail business is 600 billion dollars. However, only a dismal 5% of this is captured e-commerce industry. The language barrier is one of the major reasons for such low usage of e-commerce platforms. The proposed technical solution helps the vendors to sell their products using the existing e-commerce platforms.13.Is your proposed solution a response to the impacts of COVID-19, or an effort to contain the pandemic? If so, please explain. 1000 character limitDue to the Covid-19 pandemic, the sales of such local produce have seen a downward trend. Since the lockdown, the local artisans facing problems with the production of goods and huge unsold items. There has been no sale either through exhibitions or through orders. These days, people prefer to stay inside and do not want to take risks by going into crowded places like exhibitions or local markets. Hence, this has forced the public to go for e-commerce or mobile commerce platforms. Hence digitization should become a priority for all small and medium scale enterprises. If they can get connected to e-commerce platforms and host their products, there will be a greater reach of markets.14.Does your proposed solution contribute to combatting climate change or promoting a greener planet? If so, please explain. racter limitIf people go for store shopping, they have the tendency of visiting many shops. This may require more energy consumption and carbon emission.Since the mobility of the seller and customer is reduced to a larger extent, this e-commerce platform promotes the Green planet mission.The practice of using local vendors and suppliers can be considered as a green business because by having local delivery of products and supplies, carbon emission is reduced.15.How is your proposal relevant to the development challenges of India? 1000 character limitKannada is a language spoken largely in the southern state of Karnataka. The total population of Karnataka state is around 64 million people. Karnataka is one of the largest states in India. Over the past decade, there is phenomenal growth in terms of mobile users in India. Equally, there is a significant rise in the number of people using smart phones. The estimated total internet user base is set to grow from 665 million in 2019 to 829 million by 2021. India will see internet users’ rise by about 40 percent and the number of smart phones to double by 2023, as McKinsey reported in a report. However, e-commerce usage among the population is very low. India is a multilingual nation, and people who are semi-literate or not familiar with the English language will find it difficult to operate e-commerce sites. The proposed solution is to remove such a language barrier and help connect the vendors to the global market.16.What consideration have you made of gender in developing your concept? Could your project address gender inequality or other kinds of inequality? 1000 character limitThe proposal is gender neutral as it provides a platform for advertising and better marketing facilities to sell their products made by both male and female artisans.The advent of new technologies should help to reduce the digital divide across different regions around the globe. Contrary to this, the technologies developed have increased the gap across some societies. Especially, the semi-literate people and from rural regions are prone to inequality in terms of digital integration. We are aware of the impact e-commerce has brought to societies. However, the majority of e-commerce transactions happen in the English language. Due to this, many people who are not familiar with the English language are disadvantaged. Especially, the vendors who produce local products are unable to reach wider markets. The current proposal addresses this drawback and helps utilize AI technology to solve this issue.Notes: Please be kindly reminded of the primary criteria: relevance to the environmental and/or C19 agenda. See boxes 13 and 14. Except box 5, all boxes require mandatory response.In the interests of fairness, proposals that exceed the character limits will not be considered. ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download