Bengaluru, The ACSEL Technology Forum, a Karnataka government Centre of Excellence in AI, on Wednesday launched Tathyakosh.in, a digital public good aimed at making India's fragmented public data ecosystem more accessible, officials said.
Tathyakosh brings together public datasets from multiple sources on a single searchable platform, making it easier for users to discover and assess relevant data, they said.
IT-BT Minister Priyank Kharge unveiled the platform, which is now live at Tathyakosh.in.
It is expected to be particularly useful for researchers, startups and technology teams working with data-intensive applications in areas such as healthcare, agriculture, climate, legal research and financial inclusion, they said.
According to a statement, finding public data in India often requires searching across multiple government portals, research institutions and other repositories.
Tathyakosh, developed by the ACSEL Technology Forum in association with the IIT Alumni Centre Bengaluru, addresses this challenge by bringing together more than 1.5 million datasets from 458 data sources on a single searchable platform.
"The platform gets its name from 'Tathya', meaning 'that which it is' or 'truth' in Sanskrit, and 'Kosh', meaning a repository or storehouse. True to its name, Tathyakosh brings together public datasets from diverse sources, making them easier for researchers, developers, startups and policymakers to discover and assess," it said.
{{/usCountry}}"The platform gets its name from 'Tathya', meaning 'that which it is' or 'truth' in Sanskrit, and 'Kosh', meaning a repository or storehouse. True to its name, Tathyakosh brings together public datasets from diverse sources, making them easier for researchers, developers, startups and policymakers to discover and assess," it said.
{{/usCountry}}Speaking at the launch, Priyank said India's AI ambitions would depend not only on talent and computing power but also on the ability to find and use the vast amount of data already available across institutions.
"Tathyakosh addresses a fundamental gap by making this data discoverable, structured and easier to use," he said.
"By building it as an open, non-commercial digital public good, we are creating an important piece of infrastructure for researchers, startups, developers and policymakers to build with Indian data," he added.
Officials said Tathyakosh does not store the datasets itself. Instead, users are directed to the source of each dataset, preserving the ownership and provenance of the data while making it significantly easier to discover.
"India has no shortage of data. The challenge is knowing where the data is, whether it is relevant, whether it is reliable and whether it can be used. We wanted to make it easier for a researcher, developer, policymaker or startup to discover what already exists before spending time and resources looking for it elsewhere," said Ashok Kamath, Director, ACSEL Technology Forum.
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