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Welcome to the online nomination form of the The Economic Times AI-IoT Excellence Awards in association with the Knowledge Partner CMR. This year, our aim is to recognise and reward the top AI and IoT Innovations implemented by enterprises in India.

Please read the selection criteria carefully for the awards on the website before filing your nominations to ensure that your project qualifies. You can nominate as many AI/IoT initiatives as you would like but you must use a separate form for each one.

Please note that these awards are meant for commercial enterprises, government organisations and PSUs with either 500 employees or INR 500 Cr. annual turnover. If your nomination qualifies by our analysts, we will send you a detailed audit form to collect more information about your project. Thank you and wish you all the best!


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Award Categories


AI and IoT:

This category would identify and recognize the best deployments in a specific industry, be it BFSI, manufacturing, IT/ITeS, Healthcare, Retail, etc. An industry must receive at least 5 nominations to be applicable for this category. Selection would be based on a comparison of the deployment against others received from the same industry.

As the name suggests, any deployment of AI that has something unique or different about it that makes it stand apart from the others would be considered in this category. Here, tech complexity doesn’t matter, nor does scale. We’ll just look for how innovative and unique was the idea behind the deployment.

Today it’s not only about how good is your product or service offering, but how good is the customer experience you offer. AI can certainly help, whether in doing the right kind of marketing or providing customer support. This category would therefore look at innovative use of AI to either acquire new customers or service existing ones.

Organizations are always striving toward identifying processes that could be automated to save time and/or money. Various AI technologies can be used to automate back-end processes in various departments of an organization. We’ll recognize the most innovative uses of AI in a department like sales and marketing, HR, finance, production, etc.

This category will examine the complexity of architecture in an AI deployment and will look at the overall design, the number of components of AI used, as well as the number of non-AI components integrated into the solution.

Whether it’s the govt. or corporate CSR initiatives, AI can be used for the betterment of humanity and the planet. This category would consider AI deployments that have been used to improve lives of people in general or even our planet.



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IoT Only

Smart uses of sensors to automate various aspects of a smart city can be filed here, whether it’s for weather forecasts, energy management, water management, street lighting, home security, vehicle parking, smart locks, etc. If there’s a deployment done for a smart city where IoT has been put to creative use, then it deserves to be nominated in this category.

Vehicles that are connected to either communicate with the driver, other vehicles on the road, the cloud, or other surroundings with the help of sensors fit into this category. If you have released a vehicle with any of these properties, and have an interesting story to tell about it, then file it here.

Robots were a key highlight of CES last year, and are being created to perform a variety of jobs, be it agro-drones, warehouse automation robots, customer interaction robots, etc. This category aims to recognize robots that have been deployed to solve a particular purpose. Please note that only recent innovations in robotics would be considered here. Standard robotic arms and other automation equipment that has been used in factories for years would not apply.

Whether you’ve put sensors to track your goods from factory to their destination on time, or you’re using them to track perishable goods and reduce their wastage, IoT is key ingredient in today’s modern supply chain.

Use of any combination of IoT with cloud, cyber-physical systems, AI, etc. for automation in manufacturing.

Whether it’s HVAC, lighting, or fire safety, IoT is being used to enable better operations of buildings by providing more useful data about them to the owners. If you’ve IoT-enabled your building and are driving some true value from it, then file it here.



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AI Only

The whole beauty of AI is to be able to analyze huge volumes of data in real-time, whether to provide a smooth customer experience, send off alerts if a machine is about to fail and requires maintenance, or provide insights in real time for the management to act upon. If you’ve deployed AI for such an innovative use, then file it in this category.

Fraud detection and prevention is a strong use case for AI, given the speed at which malware threats are increasing in both volume and viciousness. AI is a key ingredient that can automatically recognizer patterns and block them without human intervention. If you’ve been able to achieve tighter security with the help of AI, then file it here.

Please nominate a project where AI is being used to monitor and manage enormous amounts of transactions to detect money laundering, and hacking attempts, behavioral analytics, or do other tasks like data de-duplication, tagging, data grouping, and much more,



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Best AI and IoT Solutions

Any AI solution would be ineffective if it doesn't get the requisite compute power. If you have a hardware that has been designed for AI solutions, then please nominate it here.

An AI deployment is as good as the technology that powers it. If you have a truly innovative AI solution/software that can make a huge impact on an enterprise's internal or external processes, then please nominate them here.

An IoT platform is a key ingredient for a wide variety of deployments. If you feel you have such a platform that solves some key business problems, then nominate it here.



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Nomination Rules

For both types of deployments:
  • Anybody can nominate either their OWN AI or IoT deployment or do it on behalf of someone else. This could be within your own company or of another company’s deployment, provide all the details are given.
  • These awards are only meant to recognize AI or IoT deployments and not their products or platforms. If you have a compelling offering in this space that you’d like us to consider, then please nominate its best deployment.
  • Decision of ET and CMR will be final and not subject to any jurisdiction whatsoever.
  • Must have been deployed after Jan 1, 2017.

For AI nominations:
  • Must have a cognitive element where the software does self-learning. A simple BI or analytics application for instance, doesn’t qualify, unless it has automated self-learning.
  • Must have been deployed/built using AI/ML tools, and not routine software.

For IoT nominations:
  • Robotic arms or factory automation equipment that have been used in factories for ages don’t qualify.
  • Can be innovative use of robotics in any industry.

For AI-IoT Solutions Nominations:
  • Must have a good client base of AI/IoT deployments in India.
  • Should be willing to connect with key customers if evaluation demands.

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Evaluation Criteria

All nominations will be evaluated on the following parameters, so while submitting your nominations, please provide as much measurable data as possible where applicable below:


  • 1. Business Growth (revenue, scale, profitability, etc.)
  • 2. Internal Efficiency (productivity, TaT, etc.)
  • 3. Social Upliftment (benefits for Indian citizens)
  • 4. Ingenuity or innovation (anything unique that makes it stand apart from other similar deployments)
  • 5. Complexity (use of new technologies, complex algorithms, equipment, or IT architecture)
  • 6. User Experience (customer feedback ratings, testimonials, etc.)


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