Tag: Artificial Intelligence

Indian enterprises rapidly advancing GenAI adoption despite challenges: Report

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Enterprises across India are progressing from proof-of-concept (POC) projects to full-scale production deployments of Generative AI (GenAI) technology, though adoption maturity varies widely among organisations.

According to EY India’s latest report, “Is Generative AI beginning to deliver on its promise in India? – AIdea of India Update,” businesses are meticulously evaluating the enterprise-grade functionality and reliability of GenAI.

The report, released on Thursday, identifies a swift adoption curve among digital-savvy entities such as start-ups and Global Capability Centers (GCCs). These organisations are rapidly advancing POCs to production, with start-ups and GCCs leading the charge at rates of 15-20% and 30-40%, respectively.

Key Challenges and Strategic Imperatives

Despite the optimistic adoption rates, enterprises face significant challenges in fully embracing GenAI. The report highlights three critical issues: the “hallucination” of responses from large language models (LLMs), data privacy and sovereignty concerns, and the substantial cost implications of deploying GenAI in production environments.

Mahesh Makhija, Partner and Technology Consulting Leader at EY India, emphasised the necessity for enterprises to transition from ad hoc experiments to strategic, ‘fit for purpose’ use cases. “Organisations need to focus on immediate value creation and long-term functional transformation, all while managing costs and adopting a hybrid approach due to the limited availability of diverse models in India,” Makhija noted.

Sectoral Adoption and Use Cases

Analysis of India’s top 50 most valued unicorns revealed that 66% have integrated AI or GenAI technologies, signalling a robust adoption rate among start-ups. The report details that around one-third of implemented GenAI use cases involve intelligent assistants performing specific tasks, with approximately 25% dedicated to marketing automation through text generation and multimodal capabilities. Document intelligence is also a key focus, accounting for 20% of use cases in areas like document summarisation, enterprise knowledge management, and search functionalities.

Moreover, GenAI is increasingly utilized in enterprise intranets, customer-facing chatbots, enhanced user experience platforms, coding assistants, and internal process automation, showcasing its versatile application across various business functions.

Investment Landscape and Infrastructure Development

The AI investment landscape in India is diversifying, with significant investments in early-stage companies across multiple sectors. Unlike early 2023, which saw a concentration of investments in Healthcare, Life Sciences, and Financial Services, the first quarter of 2024 has witnessed expansion into Technology, Industrial, Energy Utilities, and Consumer Products Goods (CPGs).

Investors are prioritising three key evaluation criteria for potential AI investments: AI performance impact, cost implications, and compliance factors.

The availability of GPU infrastructure, essential for training models and incorporating GenAI into applications, remains a critical requirement. The report notes that the high demand for GPUs has driven up costs, but initiatives by the government, large business groups, and start-ups to build localised GPU infrastructure are set to significantly boost GenAI adoption in India.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Sony Music cautions companies to stop training AI on its artists’ content

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Sony Music Group, one of the world’s biggest record labels, warned artificial intelligence companies and music streaming platforms not to use the company’s content without explicit permission.

Sony Music, whose artists include Lil Nas X and Celine Dion, sent letters to more than 700 companies in an effort to protect its intellectual property, which includes album cover art, metadata, musical compositions and lyrics, from being used for training AI models.

“Unauthorized use” of Sony Music Group content in the “training, development or commercialization of AI systems” deprives the company and its artists of control and compensation for those works, according to the letter, which was obtained by Bloomberg News.

Copyright infringement has become a major battleground issue for generative AI, which is being used to produce all kinds of content from text to images and video. While Hollywood actors and writers went on strike last year to protect their craft from AI,  a new crop of startups is churning out entire albums of AI-generated music, heightening worries over artists’ livelihoods and rekindling tensions with streaming platforms.

Sony Music, along with the rest of the industry, is scrambling to balance the creative potential of the fast-moving technology while also protecting artists’ rights and its own profits.

“We support artists and songwriters taking the lead in embracing new technologies in support of their art,” Sony Music Group said in statement Thursday. “However, that innovation must ensure that songwriters’ and recording artists’ rights, including copyrights, are respected.”

Universal Music Group NV has been particularly outspoken over the past year-and-a-half,  going so far as to take the “nuclear option” of pulling its entire catalog of music off of TikTok and suing AI startup Anthropic for publishing song lyrics without permission.

After months of stalemate, Universal ended its feud with ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok earlier this month, with an agreement that secured a commitment from both parties to “work together to ensure AI development across the music industry will protect human artistry and the economics that flow to those artists and songwriters.”

In another sign of the growing conflict between creators and AI companies, synthetic speech startup Lovo Inc. was hit with a proposed class action lawsuit on Thursday alleging the company misappropriated actors’ voices and deceptively promoted its product as legally marketing their use. Two voiceover actors are seeking to represent people whose voice Lovo used without permission or compensation for “the purpose of creating or refining its AI text-to-speech generator” or whose AI-replicated voices were used or sold without proper compensation, according to a complaint filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

In many jurisdictions around the world, especially the European Union, copyright owners are encouraged to state publicly that their content isn’t to be used for data mining and AI training without specific licensing agreements.

In the US, the music industry has supported federal legislation in Congress that would protect artists’ voices and images from unauthorized AI use. In April, Warner Music Group Corp. Chief Executive Officer Robert Kyncl testified in front of a congressional subcommittee, stating his support for the “NO FAKES” Act.

“We must ensure a robust free-market licensing system to allow the use of copyright-protected materials for training AI models and strong legal protection for name, likeness and voice rights,” he said in prepared testimony.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

IBM to add 800 AI-related jobs in Ireland

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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IBM plans to hire up to 800 more people in Ireland to help build advanced software underpinned by AI technology, the biggest job announcement in the country’s multinational sector this year, state investment agency IDA Ireland said on Thursday.

The US IT software and consultancy services provider, which is one of the largest multinational employers in Ireland with 3,000 staff, will add the roles in research and development, digital sales and consulting.

Ireland is hugely reliant on foreign multinationals, which have almost doubled their workforce in the last decade to make up around 11% of the entire labour market.

However, multinational employment fell by 0.3% last year, the first annual decline since 2009 as layoffs in the technology sector offset jobs growth in every other category.

“This is set to deliver real uplift in the Irish technology ecosystem by advancing capabilities across key growth areas for IDA Ireland such as cloud, AI, quantum and cybersecurity,” IDA Ireland chief executive Michael Lohan said in a statement.

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Is Open AI trying to steal Google’s thunder? Sundar Pichai responds

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Just a day before Alphabet was scheduled to hold its annual Google developers’ conference, OpenAI on May 13 launched its new AI model GPT-4o, short for “omni,” which will power the ChatGPT chatbot and will be available to users including those who use the free version.

Was Open AI trying to steal Google’s thunder by announcing upgrades to Chat GPT ahead of the Google I/O event? Well, the CEO of Google and Alphabet Sundar Pichai believes “one event happened over a day, does not matter over time.”

“From my perspective, this inflexion point we are on with AI, the opportunity that I see, you want to zoom out, the fact that one event happened over a day, does not matter over time,” he said on the sidelines of the Google developers’ conference on May 15.

Pichai explained that it’s important to have a perspective as work is underway on the most profound technologies that humanity will ever work on. “As a company, we have been investing in it over a long time. We are developing state of art models and working to deploy them to billions of people in a way where we can make a difference in their lives. And to me, that’s the North Star, that’s our mission. We stay focussed on that.”

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Reflecting on the launch of OpenAI’s GPT-4o and ChatGPT’s desktop version, the Google CEO said these are “micro-moments” and that it’s good to see other companies innovate as he loves to see innovation. “We are as divided by innovation as you all are. It pushes us to do better. It’s good for the world. For me, it was a great week to be in technology,” he said.

Pichai also spoke about the adoption of artificial intelligence in emerging nations. He said that for India, like other emerging countries, technology shifts are an opportunity to catch up or leap ahead.

“Great example in India. India was never going to cross developed worlds in personal computing penetration. But for mobile, more people got access than in prior generations. People didn’t have landlines, but most people got mobiles,” he said.

Also Read: Google is taking on OpenAI’s GPT-4o model with Project Astra: Watch to find out how

He explained that with each tech shift, there is a better opportunity to drive penetration and That is genuinely true with AI.

“AI tools..for a lot of our products, India is the number one country, in terms of user base. We are committed to bringing the same AI tools. Seeing a lot of developing activity on existing AI tools. Exciting moment. India will be well positioned as the shift to AI happens,” he said.

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Homegrown research firm launches India’s first open-source multilingual foundation model for Gen AI adoption

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Indian AI research firm Soket AI Labs on Wednesday announced the launch of India’s first fully open-source multilingual foundation model Pragna-1B, which leverages Google Cloud services to enable Generative AI adoption.

The model is said to be proficient in vernacular languages like Hindi, English, Bengali, and Gujarati. According to Google Cloud, Pragna-1B is designed with Indian contexts in mind, ensuring transparency and clarity for enterprises integrating AI into their operations.

Abhishek Upperwal, Founder of Soket AI Labs, highlighted the role of the partnership with Google Cloud in the pre-training of the Pragna-1B model. “By leveraging Google Cloud’s AI Infrastructure, we achieved both efficiency and cost-effectiveness in the development of Pragna-1B,” he stated.

Despite being trained on fewer parameters, Pragna-1B is said to have “unparalleled efficiency and innovation”, showcasing comparable performance and effectiveness in language processing tasks to similar category models.

Bikram Singh Bedi, Vice President and Country MD of Google Cloud India, expressed excitement about the partnership with Soket AI Labs. “Built on Google Cloud, the launch of Pragna-1B marks a pioneering leap in Indian language technology,” he noted. The model promises enhanced scalability and efficiency for organisations, aiming to democratise AI innovation in India.

Additionally, Soket will soon list its AI Developer Platform in the Google Cloud Marketplace and the Pragna series of models in the Google Vertex AI model registry. This, according to the firm, will provide developers with a powerful, streamlined experience for fine-tuning models.

The collaboration will further enable foundational work for training large-scale models and curating high-quality datasets for Indian languages to foster AI innovation in India.

Also Read: Google I/O 2024: New generative media tools Veo and Imagen 3 revealed

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3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

TCS asked 1,300 CEOs about AI — here’s what they said

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) ran a global AI study across 24 countries and took responses from 1,300 executives representing companies with annual revenues ranging from $1 billion to over $5 billion.

Most participants were positive about the impact of AI. About 65% of the executives believe AI would enhance human capabilities but maintain that competitive advantage would still come from humans.

One of the key takeaways from the study is the comparison of AI with past disruptive technologies like the internet and smartphones. Most executives believe AI’s impact on their business models will be substantial:

• 54% believe the impact will be greater or equal to the internet
• 59% say the impact of AI on business will be greater or equal to smartphones

Executives are generally optimistic about AI’s potential:

• 57% say they are excited about AI’s potential impact on their business
• 55% are currently making changes to their business models, the roles of their stakeholders, or changes to their offerings and how they sell them
• 17% are discussing Al and making enterprise-wide plans for it

However, the study highlights a lack of consensus on AI adoption strategies:

• 28% want to establish an enterprise-wide AI strategy to maximise its benefits to the company
• 23% want to experiment and take risks with AI to maximise its benefits
• 23% want to wait and see how AI gets used in their industry and follow the lead of others

The study reveals a divided opinion on AI’s impact on the workforce:

• 49% think AI will increase or have no impact on the number of job roles created
• 47% expect more roles will be eliminated than will be created

On productivity, opinions are mixed:

• 40% think it will incrementally improve productivity
• 12% say they aren’t expecting much impact on their company’s productivity
• 22% think Al will increase productivity by 4X or more
• 26% expect AI to double enterprise productivityAI adoption varies significantly across different corporate functions. The study reveals that the most AI-implemented functions include finance/comptroller, HR, and marketing. On the other hand, supply chain/logistics has seen the fewest AI implementations.

  Industries also differ in their progress towards integrating AI. Life sciences, healthcare, and banking, financial services & insurance are leading in AI realignment. Consumer packaged goods and utilities are trailing.

  Despite the optimism, there are significant challenges which include current IT infrastructure, customer expectations, and  IT service providers. Generative AI also creates issues such as security and privacy, ethical use, IT readiness, and talent development.

  With tightening IT budgets, it is crucial to demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) for AI projects. However, 72% of executives highlight the need for better Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure AI success.

Also Read: OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever is leaving the company

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3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Google I/O 2024: Gemini 1.5 Pro is here with enhanced features

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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At the annual developer’s conference, Google I/O, held in Mountain View, California, on Tuesday, May 14, Google announced the launch of Gemini 1.5 Pro, offering advanced features to Gemini Advanced subscribers in over 35 languages. The update includes a 1 million token context window, a new conversational experience, and tools that enable Gemini to take action on behalf of users.

Gemini is designed to serve as a personal AI assistant, providing conversational, intuitive, and helpful interactions. The latest updates aim to enhance the user experience by introducing a longer context window, new data analysis capabilities, connections to additional Google apps, and more customizable options.

The expanded context window, starting at 1 million tokens, allows Gemini to comprehend multiple large documents, summarize lengthy emails, and soon handle video content and complex codebases.

Furthermore, users can now upload files directly into Gemini Advanced from Google Drive or their devices, enabling quick access to insights from dense documents and data files. It also ensures privacy as the uploaded files are not used to train the models.

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The new Gemini 1.5 Pro also brings significant improvements to image understanding, making it natively multimodal. Users can now utilise image-based queries to receive tailored responses, such as requesting a recipe based on a photo of a dish or seeking step-by-step instructions for solving a math problem from an image.

In addition to these enhancements, Google is introducing Gemini Live for Gemini Advanced subscribers, offering a more natural conversational experience through text and speech interactions. This feature leverages speech technology to enable intuitive conversations with Gemini, including the ability to choose from a variety of natural-sounding voices and speak at one’s own pace.

Moreover, the new planning experience in Gemini Advanced aims to simplify complex tasks such as organising trip itineraries. Gemini can create personalised itineraries based on user preferences and travel details by integrating information from various sources like Gmail, Google Maps, and Search.

To further personalise the experience, Gemini Advanced subscribers will soon have the ability to create customised versions of Gemini called Gems. These Gems can be tailored to specific needs, such as serving as a gym buddy or a creative writing guide.

Google also announced plans to integrate more Google apps with Gemini, including Google Calendar, Tasks, and Keep. This will enable seamless interactions between Gemini and these apps, allowing users to perform tasks like creating calendar entries and adding items to their task lists through simple prompts.

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Exploring AI’s impact on policy, innovation, and industry at AI Alliance NCR Chapter

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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India’s artificial intelligence (AI) market is experiencing unprecedented growth, poised to reach $17 billion by 2027, with an annual growth rate of 25-35% from 2024 to 2027. This surge is propelled by innovative applications across healthcare, customer service, and more, underpinned by advancements in AI chips and edge computing. Integrating blockchain and IoT continues to push the boundaries of technological innovation, solidifying AI’s role in India’s digital transformation.

And Delhi-NCR is central to this revolution, emerging as a major tech and startup hub. With over 7,000 startups, including 10 unicorns, and a thriving ecosystem conducive to AI adoption and innovation, the region is ideally positioned to host the CNBC-TV18 and Moneycontrol AI Alliance NCR Chapter on May 17 in Gurugram. This vibrant ecosystem’s potential is further underscored by TiE’s Vision 2025, which projects Delhi-NCR to be among the top 5 global startup hubs, with more than 12,000 active startups, 30 unicorns, and a total valuation exceeding $150 billion, signalling a promising future for innovation in the region.

Following the remarkable success of previous chapters in Bengaluru and Pune, the AI Alliance NCR event is set to delve deeper into AI’s transformative impact across various sectors. This gathering in NCR will bring together industry leaders, innovators, and visionaries to discuss AI’s extensive implications for sectors such as healthcare, finance, education, and more.

Esteemed speakers, including S Krishnan, Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, and Abhishek Singh, Additional Secretary, will offer insights into the strategic integration of AI within national frameworks and its role in policy and economic development. Alongside them, tech leaders like Rajan Anandan and Kunal Bahl will share their expertise on leveraging AI for entrepreneurial growth and startup scalability.

Additionally, the event will feature Rafee Tarafdar, Chief Technology Officer at Infosys, discussing AI’s potential to disrupt or enhance the IT industry, and Prateek Maheshwari from Physics Wallah, alongside Mayank Kumar from UpGrad, who will explore AI’s transformative effects on education. Hemant Mohapatra, a partner at Lightspeed, will discuss building scalable AI solutions that cater to India’s vast demographic needs.

As Delhi-NCR continues to ascend as a global innovation hub, the AI Alliance NCR chapter will represent an invaluable opportunity for professionals to engage with the forefront of technological innovation. You will leave with actionable knowledge and insights that could shape the future of your enterprises and the broader tech ecosystem.

For more details visit: https://www.moneycontrol.com/msite/global-ai-conclave/gurugram

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Meta exploring AI-assisted earbuds with cameras: Report

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Meta Platforms is exploring making earphones powered by artificial intelligence with cameras, The Information reported on Monday citing employees familiar with the matter.

A slew of companies, from startups to conglomerates including Meta, are looking to develop AI-based wearable devices to capture growing interest in the sector.

The Facebook parent expects the device, being explored under a project named “Camerabuds”, to identify objects and translate foreign languages, the report added.

Meta announced new generation Ray-Ban smart glasses, priced at $299, in September last year, which will also have its AI built-in, with the ability to give information on the item a user is looking at.

The Instagram and WhatsApp owner did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

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Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

OpenAI rival Anthropic brings Claude chatbot to Europe in revenue push

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic has launched its Claude chatbot and subscription plans in Europe, a more tightly regulated market that has challenged some of its rivals, as the company works to boost users and revenue.

Anthropic said the company’s basic software offering already has some traction in sectors like finance and hospitality across Europe. Now, it’s looking to build on that. Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei said the startup’s cloud-computing partners — Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google — will help it meet the tighter restrictions on data usage for businesses operating in the European Union.

“Our cloud providers are known for very strong security,” Amodei told Bloomberg News. “We’re well-positioned from a data security and privacy perspective.”

Formed in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, Anthropic has positioned itself as a developer of responsible and ethical AI. Like other AI companies, Anthropic has also increasingly focused on selling its services to corporate customers. Earlier this month, it introduced a Team plan for companies. Amodei declined to comment on demand for its paid tiers so far.

Anthropic is bringing similarly priced plans to Europe. As it does, however, Anthropic will be up against OpenAI, which is already available in the EU, as well as local competitors like Mistral, a French AI model developer formed last year.

The company also faces stiffer regulation. Earlier this year, the EU adopted the AI Act, the most comprehensive legislation addressing the tech. The bill was watered down slightly from more aggressive earlier versions, but it still imposes rules on AI model developers like Anthropic, requiring them to use adequate cybersecurity controls and disclose certain details on the design and potential risks of their models. Very large AI systems are subject to further restrictions.

Anthropic’s largest model meets those restrictions and the startup is still waiting on how EU regulators will enforce these new rules, the company said. “We are going to find out how they implement it,” said Jack Clark, Anthropic’s co-founder and policy chief.

Google released its Gemini app earlier this year in several countries, but the service is not yet available in the EU. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, meanwhile, has been hit with privacy complaints in Europe.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow