Children in Telangana can now look forward to learning game development, VFX and animation during summer vacation. This was announced by IT Principal Secretary Jayesh Ranjan.
“We have been pursuing this for the past 11 months, and finally Peter Vesterbacka has agreed to our proposal. Students can try their hand at these emerging technologies and learn from the master,” said Mr. Ranjan. The Finnish game developer and innovator Mr. Vesterbacka, known for the wildly successful Angry Birds game, is in town for setting up an AI University in the city. Mr. Vesterbacka has also agreed to play an advisory role for the Telangana VFX Animation Gaming Association (Tvaga).
“This is important for Telangana and also for the whole country. Hyderabad is sandwiched between Bengaluru and Mumbai in this fast-growing market. We can emerge as a leader as the year-on-year growth is higher than other cities. As a country, we have moved up from 57 to 52 in the World Innovation Index. But we have to catch up fast,” said Mr. Ranjan at an event where Hyderabad-based Malaxmi Group signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for setting up the AI University in collaboration with Mr. Vesterbacka.
“India is six-hour journey from Finland, so we have geographic proximity. We have five million people and have created success stories like Linux, Nokia and Angry Birds. Finland has been able to do this as it focussed on education. We educate young people as best as possible. In India, we will be involved in AI and students will get an entrepreneurial AI degree and they will be in a position to become the leaders of change,” said Mr. Vesterbacka. “We want this to be operational as quickly as possible. We have a huge shortage of talent in Finland, and I hope we can work together,” said Mr. Vesterbacka.
B. Deepa of Malaxmi Group gave a brief about the MoU to set up the AI University.
“This collaboration aims at producing high-quality graduates, who will work in emerging technologies like game development and AI. We are going to foster a start-up ecosystem for robotics and gaming technology,” said Ms. Deepa.