ATK
New Delhi [India], January 2: The IIT Alumni Council proudly announces the launch of its Generative AI Platform (GAP), an innovative tool designed to revolutionize the creative process of crafting and sharing inspiring life journeys through non-fiction books and video documentaries.
GAP is a bold 100-week mission initiated in April 2022 alongside the launch of The Maverick Effect. Authored by IT industry veteran, NASSCOM cofounder, and its first elected Chairman, Harish Mehta, the book took a team of seven experts over three years to compile. Praised as "a definitive and authoritative biography of NASSCOM" by Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy and described by Tata Sons Chairman N. Chandrasekaran as "a parable of our shared homeland...with no shortage of inspiration," The Maverick Effect uncovers the untold story of India's IT revolution. The book inspired IIT Alumni Council donors and members to emulate Harish Mehta's storytelling legacy, uncovering hidden tales of transformative movements that could inspire generations. However, the decade-long journey of creating such impactful works highlighted the need for a faster yet equally authentic process, leading to the creation of GAP. "With The Maverick Effect, we captured how NASSCOM sparked India's IT revolution. GAP builds on this legacy, enabling transformative stories to be told faster, bolder, and with unmatched authenticity," said Harish Mehta. The impact of the book also inspired a Harvard case study on the power of self-regulation.
Transforming Storytelling Through GAP
The GAP framework, beta-tested in 2023-24, successfully produced autobiographies, self-help books, and technical compendiums ranging from 200 to 1,000 pages. To expand its reach, the Council has partnered with Forum Publishing (for books) and Anytime Media (for videos). GAP is now being applied to the Vishwaguru Book & Video series, a 21-book project chronicling the journeys of the Council's Lifetime Achievement Awardees. Content is optimized for interactive tablet viewing, video integration, and high-quality printing across text, audio, picture book, and video formats.
"GAP brings together advanced AI tools, agents, and models into a unified, secure database with multi-layer meta tagging," said Ravi Sharma, President of the IIT Alumni Council. "Open-source models like Llama are trained on this database, with proprietary tools like the IIT Sans font enabling seamless content generation in text, audio, and video formats. Forum Publisher, GAP's front end, integrates cybersecurity safeguards and AI tools to ensure quality and reliability."
Proven Success and Ambitious Goals
During the beta phase, GAP delivered several notable works in record time: How to Be on Top by Being in Bliss Forever by IIT Kanpur alumnus Gyanesh Choudhry was completed in under eight months, Unbridled ... the Garcha Way in four months, and Ayurveda Revisited by Dr. Shantaram Kane in the same timeframe. The first Forum series book, Accelerate Your Journey, was released in under two months, while Monetise Your Research took less than a month. GAP now targets reducing production time for OTT video episodes from three months and $1 million to just three weeks and $100,000.
"Our goal is to celebrate and preserve the transformative contributions of IIT Alumni with authenticity and depth," said Geetika Saigal, Convenor of the Forum Publishing Platform and Founder of Beeja House, a leading publisher of books for intellectuals. "With a bold vision to launch 100 non-fiction books in 100 weeks, GAP empowers authors and creators with multilingual tools to craft inspiring stories and dynamic OTT content for diverse audiences."
Beyond Storytelling: The Future of GAP
Looking ahead, GAP aims to integrate large language models (LLMs) to transform research into books, patents, and even physical products. "GAP goes beyond simply converting thoughts and documents into books--it redefines what books can be. For instance, it can handle bookkeeping, treating accounts as structured content for a book," said Mrinalini Gupta, Life Fellow of the IIT Alumni Council. The GAP base stack is also being applied across other Forum platforms, such as drafting and defending patent filings through the Forum RIPM platform, as highlighted in the book Monetise Your Research. This versatility underscores GAP's transformative potential.
Maverick Effect
The Maverick Effect, authored by Harish Mehta, cofounder of NASSCOM, tells the extraordinary story of how NASSCOM laid the foundation for India's IT industry, creating an ecosystem that propelled the nation onto the global tech stage. With endorsements from iconic leaders like Nandan Nilekani, Deepak Parekh, S Ramadorai, and Rishad Premji as well as new-age changemakers like Rajan Anandan, Anupam Mittal, and Namita Thapar, the book not just became a national bestseller but also an inspiring blueprint for building transformative industries and creating lasting impact.
Forum Publishing
Forum is the mission initiative of the IIT Alumni Council which was formed with a target to create a worldwide professional services organisation of global size and stature within ten years. Forum is a collective of IIT Alumni from across one hundred city chapters around the world and is home to an intellectual and technology talent pools larger than any commercial consulting organisation anywhere. (www.forum.iitcouncil.org/publishing)
IIT Alumni Council
IIT Alumni Council is the largest global body of alumni across all the twenty-three IITs and other partnering Institutes. Established in 2019, the IIT Alumni Council aspires to catalyse India's technological renaissance. The Council aspires to both compete and cooperate with initiatives of the Indian government in areas like climate change, human health and deeptech. IIT Alumni Council works to act as a network and as a bridge between various providers of wisdom, knowledge, information, ideas, expertise, wealth and entrepreneurship to promote technological solutions to social challenges. (https://www.iitalumnicouncil.org/)
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