Government of Karnataka’s Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence (ACSEL Technology Forum) launched Tathyakosh.in, a unified public good data discovery platform, on August 12.

Unveiling Tathyakosh.in at Vikas Soudha, Priyank Kharge, Minister for Home, Information Technology, Biotechnology and E-Governance, Government of Karnataka, 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.”

According to the Minister, by building it as an open, non-commercial Digital Public Good, government was creating an important piece of infrastructure for researchers, startups, developers and policymakers to build with Indian data.

Tathyakosh addressed a fundamental challenge in India’s data ecosystem: while the country generates enormous volumes of public data, finding the right dataset, understanding its quality, and determining whether it can actually be used often requires navigating multiple disconnected platforms, Mr. Kharge elaborated.

“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,” commented Ashok Kamath, Director, ACSEL Technology Forum.

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 onto a single searchable platform.

These 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 platform gets its name from ‘Tathya’, meaning ‘that what it is’ or ‘truth’ in Sanskrit, and ‘Kosh’, meaning a repository or storehouse. Tathyakosh is expected to bring together public datasets from diverse sources, making them easier for researchers, developers, startups and policymakers to discover and assess.

N. Manjula, Secretary, Department of Electronics, IT and BT, Government of Karnataka, said, “There is a lot of data available, but it is often spread across different platforms and institutions. Tathyakosh gives users a way to find that information without having to search each source separately.”