TDB Backs Project VeerAI With Rs 130 Crore for AI Vision Chip

The correct answer is Rs 130 crore. The Technology Development Board, which works under the Department of Science and Technology, agreed to give BigEndian Semiconductors of Bengaluru exactly this amount out of the Research Development and Innovation Fund, and the money is being routed through Optional Convertible Debt rather than as an outright grant. Option C is the trap most students fall into, because Rs 260 crore is the total cost of Project VeerAI, not the board's share; the board is paying half the bill, so the two figures must be kept apart in memory. Options A and D are round numbers that look plausible for a chip programme but match nothing in the agreement, neither the board's share nor the project's cost. A quick way to hold this is to pair the two numbers together: the whole project costs Rs 260 crore, and the Technology Development Board carries Rs 130 crore of it.

The correct answer is a camera-focused AI Vision System-on-Chip. Project VeerAI is building a single piece of silicon that lets a camera do its own thinking, combining artificial intelligence processing with security, privacy and connectivity features on a sovereign technology platform. Its first market is CCTV and surveillance in India and the Global South, with defence, automotive, industrial and medical uses planned afterwards. Option C is wrong, and is worth noting carefully, because the programme deliberately chose an application-specific chip over a general-purpose processor: a narrow design reaches buyers faster and fits one industry's needs more exactly. Option A is wrong because nothing in the project concerns memory or data centre storage. Option D is wrong because quantum computing is a separate field altogether and forms no part of this agreement. The phrase to remember is AI Vision SoC, built for cameras.

The correct answer is TRL-9. The agreement states that the project must lift the technology from Technology Readiness Level 5, where it stands now, to Technology Readiness Level 9, the stage at which a product has proved itself in actual use rather than in a laboratory. BigEndian Semiconductors will spend the board's money on further development, validation, integration, testing and scale-up precisely in order to make that climb. Options A, B and C each name an intermediate rung the technology will pass through on the way, but none of them is the destination written into the agreement, so each is incomplete rather than merely wrong. The logic behind the target is worth remembering: the Research Development and Innovation Fund is meant for technologies that need heavy investment to travel the last distance from advanced development to commercial deployment, which is exactly the stretch between TRL-5 and TRL-9.

The correct answer is the Department of Science and Technology. The Technology Development Board, the body that signed the agreement with BigEndian Semiconductors and that administers the Research Development and Innovation Fund, works under the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. Its Secretary is Rajesh Kumar Pathak, who described semiconductors as the foundation of almost every emerging technology. Option A is the distractor to watch, since the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology also runs chip-related schemes, but it is not the parent of the Technology Development Board. Option C is wrong because the Ministry of Heavy Industries handles capital goods and automobile manufacturing policy, not research funding of this kind. Option D is wrong because the Department of Telecommunications deals with telecom networks and spectrum. For the exam, link three names together: TDB, the RDI Fund and the Department of Science and Technology.