8MAY 2024GMR AIRPORTS SECURES STAKE IN WAISL91 PERCENT OF INDIAN COMPANIES TO LEVERAGE DATA FOR TRAINING AI MODELS- NETAPPGMR Airports Infrastructure announced on Tues-day its acquisition of an 8.4 percent stake in WAISL, a provider of digital infrastructure ser-vices at airports. This move is part of GMR's strategy to enhance its position in airport-related businesses. According to a regulatory filing, the company has en-tered into an agreement to purchase 4,60,000 shares, equivalent to an 8.4 percent stake in WAISL, from Ut-thishta Virat Fund for Rs 56.66 crore.Established in 2009, WAISL specializes in deliv-ering digital infrastructure solutions at airports and serves as the exclusive partner for IT services in air-port operations.In its filing, GMR Airports Infrastructure stated that it has been actively exploring investment oppor-tunities in entities involved in airport adjacencies and related businesses to bolster its presence across all facets of airport-related operations.GMR Airports Infrastructure operates under GMR Airports (GAL), which manages various airports, in-cluding those in Delhi, Hyderabad, Goa, and the Phil-ippines.Following this announcement, shares of the com-pany experienced a 2.75 percent decline, trading at Rs 85.19 apiece in late afternoon trade on the BSE. In 2024, about 91 percent of Indian companies are pro-jected to utilize at least half of their data for training artificial intelligence (AI) models, as per insights from NetApp, an intelligent data infrastructure company. This statistic underscores India's leadership in AI and cloud innovation compared to its global peers.India stands out as an AI frontrunner, with 70 percent of enterprises actively running AI projects or in progress, a figure significantly higher than the global average of 49 percent. Puneet Gupta, VP & MD of NetApp India/SAARC, attributed India's AI leadership to its abundant data re-sources, stating, "India is a country of humungous data sets. No surprise then, that India leads the world, and cor-porations are embracing AI to further their IT agenda."The report, based on a survey of 1,300 IT executives across key global markets, including the US, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, and India, revealed that AI-leading countries like India, Singapore, the UK, and the US have a higher prevalence of AI projects compared to AI-lagging coun-tries such as Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and Japan.Moreover, 87 percent of Indian companies have opti-mized their IT environments for AI, a trend also observed in some AI-lagging countries like Germany (67 percent) and Spain (59 percent). Gabie Boko, Chief Marketing Offi-cer at NetApp, emphasized the importance of data-ready enterprises that integrate and unify diverse structured and unstructured data sets into an intelligent data infra-structure to thrive in the era of AI. TOPSTORIES
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