Government of Karnataka’s Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence, set up in association with the IIT Alumni Centre Bengaluru (IITACB), launches Tathyakosh

Platform brings together more than 1.5 million datasets from 458 sources on a single searchable platform

Tathyakosh enables researchers, startups, developers and policymakers to discover and assess public data more efficiently

Government of Karnataka’s Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence (ACSEL Technology Forum) today 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 at Vikas Soudha, Bengaluru, by Shri Priyank Kharge, Hon’ble Minister for Home, Information Technology, Biotechnology and E-Governance, Government of Karnataka, in the presence of Dr. N. Manjula (IAS), Secretary, Department of Electronics, IT and BT, Government of Karnataka, and Dr. Avinash Menon Rajendran (IAS), Managing Director, Karnataka Innovation and Technology Society (KITS). Also present were Mr. Ashok Kamath, Secretary, IIT Alumni Centre Bengaluru (IITACB) and Director, Centre of Excellence in AI; Prof. Ashok Misra, President, IITACB; and Suman Dash, COO, 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.

The platform gets its name from “Tathya”, meaning “that what 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.

Speaking at the launch, Hon’ble Minister for Home, Information Technology, Biotechnology and E- Governance, Shri 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.

” Tathyakosh addresses 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.“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.

Dr. 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. Importantly, the platform also helps users understand the quality and fitness of the data for their specific needs, making it easier to identify datasets that are reliable and ready to use. That can save considerable time for developers, researchers and data scientists.”

Addressing a critical data bottleneck for AI As India’s artificial intelligence ecosystem expands, access to large, structured and trustworthy datasets is becoming increasingly important. Startups, researchers and developers working across areas such as healthcare, agriculture, climate, legal research and financial inclusion often face challenges in identifying what datasets exist, who published them and whether they are suitable for computational use.

Every dataset on the Tathyakosh platform carries a quality score across seven dimensions — Findability, Accessibility, Machine-Readability, Freshness, Completeness, Granularity and Coverage Completeness. This gives developers, researchers and data scientists an immediate, objective signal of a dataset’s fitness for use. The platform’s current historical coverage stretches back to 1947.

A strong Karnataka focus Tathyakosh already has more than 50,000 Karnataka-specific datasets catalogued. These include data from the Karnataka Open Government Data Portal, Mahiti Kanaja, KSRSAC/K-GIS, the Indian Institute of Science, the Raman Research Institute and other institutions in Bengaluru.

The platform can support researchers and universities undertaking cross-sectoral policy analysis, startups developing data-driven and AI applications, and technology teams working with data-intensive applications.

Built as a Digital Public Good Tathyakosh is an open, non-commercial Digital Public Good. It does not store the datasets itself. Instead, users are directed to the original source of each dataset, thereby retaining the original ownership while making the data significantly easier to discover.

The platform is designed to grow as more government, research and institutional datasets become available. It is expected to be particularly useful for researchers, startups and technology teams working with data-intensive applications in areas such as healthcare, agriculture, climate, legal research and financial inclusion.

Tathyakosh is now live at www.tathyakosh.in.

About ACSEL Technology Forum

ACSEL Technology Forum is a Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence, a pioneering initiative by Government of Karnataka and the IIT Alumni Centre Bengaluru (IITACB).

ACSEL works at the intersection of AI, research, industry and entrepreneurship, with a focus on building technology capabilities, enabling innovation and creating platforms that address real-world challenges. Its initiatives span AI innovation, startup acceleration, industry collaboration, research and open data infrastructure