IIITH based BharatGen team launches Patram: India’s First Vision-Language Foundational Model for Documents
A team from IIITH has introduced Patram-7B-Instruct, India’s first vision-language foundational model designed specifically for complex document understanding. This landmark achievement is part of the BharatGen initiative, a government-supported program to develop India-centric Multimodal Large Language Models, funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST). Patram-7B-Instruct is a 7-billion parameter AI model trained on a large, diverse corpus of Indian documents. It can analyze scanned or photographed documents and respond accurately to natural language instructions, making it a versatile tool for varied applications across sectors. Despite its relatively compact size, Patram surpasses larger international models such as DeepSeek-VL-2 on prominent benchmarks like DocVQA and VisualMRC.
Anemia Detection with Smartphone
Arjun Rajasekar describes how pallor detection is being used by the Raj Reddy Center for Technology and Society (RCTS) as a non-invasive method of detecting anemia. Capitalizing on the rise of AI and the ubiquity of consumer smart devices, RCTS has been exploring AI applications to improve maternal and child well-being. One of the first medical conditions chosen for exploration has been anemia, a globally prevalent issue affecting approximately 29.9% of women aged 15–49 and 39.8% of children aged 6–59 months in 2019. These rates are even higher in India, with estimates from the National Family Health Survey indicating that over 50% of women and 59% of children aged 6–59 months are anemic to varying degrees. Such widespread prevalence poses a substantial public health challenge. Anemia is characterized by a deficiency in the number of red blood cells or the hemoglobin concentration within them, resulting in a diminished capacity to transport oxygen to bodily tissues.
Prof. Ramesh Loganathan – it’s a myth, AI will replace jobs
Prof. Ramesh Loganathan has clarified that it is a myth that jobs will be lost due to artificial intelligence (AI). He suggested that employees in the IT sector should update themselves to new technology. He said that out of the total 10 lakh IT employees in Hyderabad, only 20-30 thousand are working using AI. He said that AI will not have any impact on engineering education. Just as civil and mechanical engineers are software employees, anyone who has completed any course in engineering can get qualified AI jobs. He said that there is currently a need for graduates in all fields, and there is a worrying situation in the construction and manufacturing sectors where there is a shortage of civil and mechanical engineers. In an exclusive interview with ‘Namasthe Telangana’, he shared several interesting facts about the impact AI will have on engineering education as well as the IT sector.
Prof. P J Narayanan delves into India’s tech education ecosystem with ET Education
In an ET Education exclusive conversation, Sheeba Chauhan, Senior Associate, ET Education delved into India’s tech education ecosystem with Prof P J Narayanan, Director of International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad. India is now the second-largest higher education system in the world— home to over 1,100 universities. This expansive landscape focuses on research, deep-tech innovation, startup culture, and much more. One such trailblazer is the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad — a pioneer in AI, computer vision, robotics, natural language processing, and more. In this ET Education exclusive conversation, we delved into “What it takes to build a deep-tech academic powerhouse” with Prof. P J Narayanan, Director of International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad
IIITH helps digitise Punjab assembly documents
Setting new standards in legislative transparency, the IIITH, Punjabi University (PU) Patiala, and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) Noida, have digitised images of Punjab assembly debates dating back to 1947 and made them available online. The institutions have also created a search engine to enhance public accessibility. Not only that, the team has also made it inclusive with audiobooks. The search engine, developed under the guidance of CV Jawahar of IIITH, and Gurpreet Lehal, consultant at PU, is an initiative of the National Language Translation Mission, Bhashini. The institutions launched the project about two years ago. “Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), we have converted scanned PDFs into searchable PDFs,” said Krishna Tulsyan, a research engineer from IIITH, who worked as team leader on the project. “Now, using the search engine, users can search for anything — not only in English, but also in regional languages — in these PDFs without even opening them.”
IIITH Faculty receive ANRF Early Career Research Grant
Three professors at the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad have received research grants by the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) to grow and foster a culture of research and innovation in the country. Prof. Chittaranjan Hens, Centre for Computational Natural Sciences and Bioinformatics, Prof. Karthik Vaidyanathan, Software Engineering Research Centre and Prof. Gowtham Kurri, Signal Processing and Communications Research Centre have been awarded the Prime Minister’s Early Career Research Grant initiated under the Anusandhan National Research Foundation which supports young researchers in initiating their research careers in a new institution with the help of a flexible budget and progressive initiatives for the ease of doing research. Each research grant which is meant for young researchers no older than 42 years of age provides up to 60 lakhs plus overheads for a period of 3 years.
Crop Darpan App developed by IIITH to help farmers diagnose crop health issues
A research team from IIITH led by Prof. P Krishna Reddy, in collaboration with scientists from Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University (PJTSAU), has launched Version 2 of the Crop Darpan app, an AI-powered mobile tool designed to help farmers instantly diagnose crop health issues. Development of Crop Darpan is part of a joint research initiative between India and Japan under the India-Japan Joint Research Laboratory project. The initiative, titled ‘Data Science-based Farming Support System for Sustainable Crop Production under Climatic Change’, involves multiple institutes, including IITH, IITB, PJTSAU, and the University of Tokyo. Crop Darpan helps farmers detect issues in rice and cotton crops, including pest infestations, bacterial and fungal diseases, and nutrient deficiencies. The app not only diagnoses problems but also offers scientific guidance on corrective measures.
Kohli Day 2025
The International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIITH), which houses the Kohli Centre on Intelligent Systems (KCIS), established the Centre for Digital Technologies in Healthcare (CDiTH). This is in collaboration with AIG Hospital, which is now marketed as an AI (artificial intelligence) medical facility. Prof PJ Narayanan, director of IIITH stated that CDiTH is a translation lab developed to use current digital technologies to improve the efficacy and economy of healthcare delivery for real-world impact in India and around the world by efficiently linking academic research and clinical practice. “AIG does 2,000 plus surgeries a month. Emergencies may develop in any of these patients. But, by using AI, in our hospital, we can avoid the ‘Code Blue’ situation and be able to save three lives a day. ‘Code Blue’ is a universal emergency signalling a medical alert to seek immediate attention,” said Dr. D Nageshwar Reddy, chairman, AIG Hospitals while inaugurating the CDiTH
Multi-agent AI framework for cloud operations
A joint research effort between the IIITH and cloud automation startup MontyCloud led to a breakthrough in multi-agent AI architecture. The work, aimed at improving cloud operations, has been shortlisted for the best paper award at the prestigious International Conference CAIN-2025. It’s based on the Meta Orchestrator of Your Agents (MOYA), which enables multiple AI agents to collaborate on cloud management tasks. Unlike traditional models that rely on a single large language model (LLM), MOYA distributes responsibilities among specialised agents, allowing for greater flexibility and efficiency. Managing cloud operations involves handling vast amounts of data, automating workflows and ensuring compliance with security and performance standards. IIITH’s Software Architecture for Sustainability (SA4S) group, led by Prof. Karthik V, initially developed a conversational AI copilot named Marvin to assist users with cloud tasks.
Digital twin for water utility network
Water is one of the most precious resources in urban areas, yet a significant amount is wasted due to leakages, inefficient distribution, and excessive usage. To tackle this issue, Smart Living Lab has developed a Digital Twin for water utility networks which digitally represents a physical item or assembly using integrated simulations and service data. The digital representation holds information from multiple sources across the product life cycle. This information is continuously updated and visualised in various ways to predict current and future conditions in both design and operational environments to enhance decision-making. The Digital Twin is best described as the effortless integration of data between a physical and virtual machine in either. In general, many smart city deployments have become expensive and large as there are no platforms to evaluate the plan and the requirements before actual deployment.