BENGALURU: Government of Karnataka’s Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence (ACSEL Technology Forum) launched Tathyakosh.in, a new digital public good designed to make India’s fragmented public data ecosystem easier to discover, assess and use. Tathyakosh was launched on Wednesday by Minister for Home, Information Technology, Biotechnology and E-Governance Priyank Kharge.
Finding public data in India often requires searching across multiple government portals, research institutions and other repositories. Tathyakosh, created by ACSEL Technology Forum, 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.
Priyank Kharge said, “India’s AI ambitions will depend not only on talent and computing power, but also on our ability to find and use the vast amount of data that already exists across our institutions. Tathyakosh addresses a fundamental gap by making this data discoverable, structured and easier to use. 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.”
“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.
Tathyakosh currently indexes more than 1.5 million datasets from 458 sources. The datasets are catalogued using standardised information on parameters such as domain, geography, time period, format and access type.
The platform covers 16 domains, including Health, Agriculture, Education, Infrastructure, Environment, Economy and Governance. It draws from 346 Indian sources as well as 37 international repositories containing India-relevant data. More than 92% of the datasets catalogued are open access, while 95% are machine-readable, the release added.
