BENGALURU, India — In September, when Google announced the opening of an artificial intelligence lab here, it was the latest signal that this city is primed to take off as a hub of AI, especially for health care.
Known as the Silicon Valley of India, Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore) attracts talent from one of the top computer science and engineering programs in the world — the Indian Institute of Technology — whose graduates often leave for Mountain View and Palo Alto in California but also stay to launch startups. Increasingly, they’re turning their attention to solving problems created by India’s fragmented and chaotic health care system, where specialists are scarce, huge urban-rural divides leave hundreds of millions without access to quality care, and epic traffic congestion can turn a trip to the doctor into an odyssey.
