Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence is one of 20 organizations that will share $25 million in grants from Google.org, credit and consulting from Google Cloud and coaching by Google's artificial intelligence experts, as a grantee of the Google AI Impact Challenge.

The Google AI Impact Challenge was an open call to non-profits, social enterprises, and research institutions from around the world to submit their ideas to use AI to help address societal challenges. Over 2600 organizations applied.

Wadhwani AI will receive a $2 million grant to create technologies that will help reduce crop losses in cotton farming, through integrated pest management.

More than a billion people live in smallholder farmer households worldwide, and many of these farmers struggle with avoidable pest damage that can wipe out up to 50 percent of annual crop yield. In Wadhwani AI's project, AI technology which runs on a basic smartphone,

classifies and counts pests based on photos of pest traps taken by farmers and agriculture program workers. This solution can be used to provide millions of farmers with timely, localized advice, reducing crop loss and over-use of pesticides by improving the timing of usage.

In this effort, Wadhwani AI is partnering with the Government of Maharashtra and members of the Better Cotton Initiative. They have facilitated farmer interactions and data collection, and will ultimately be able to integrate the solution into their programs. The project has the potential to develop a template that can be replicated in large-scale agriculture programs worldwide.

"Small farmers worldwide depend heavily on government and non-profit programs to figure out what to do at every step of the crop cycle. By using AI to augment human capabilities and overcome systemic challenges in these large-scale programs, we can help millions of farmers. Pest management is just the beginning," says Raghu Dharmaraju, VP - Products & Programs, Wadhwani AI.

"Wadhwani AI's mission is to use AI to help improve the lives of the billions of poor and underserved com-munities throughout the world. Agriculture is one of the critical domains in which we apply our efforts. We are grateful to Google and delighted to have their support and the benefit of their deep expertise and experience in developing AI solutions at scale," says P. Anandan, CEO, Wadhwani AI.

"We received thousands of applications to the Google AI Impact Challenge and are excited that Wadhwani AI was selected to receive funding and expertise from Google. AI is at a nascent stage when it comes to the value it can have for the social impact sector, and we look forward to seeing the outcomes of this work and considering where there is potential for us to do even more," said Jacquelline Fuller, President, Google.org.