Ola’s Bhavish Aggarwal Launches India-Focused AI Firm Krutrim
Krutrim will be involved in building AI chips, a family of large language models and a user facing app.
Ola's Bhavish Aggarwal on Friday launched Krutrim, a startup focused on building a full-stack, India-focused artificial intelligence company.
Krutrim will be involved in building AI chips, a family of large language models and a user-facing app, he said at an event in Bengaluru.
The company's base large language model is named Krutrim and is now open for early access. It will be open to the public in January next year. A more sophisticated version, the Krutrim Pro, will be launched next quarter.
Krutrim is trained in over 20 Indian languages and can respond to about 10 of them. The team is based in Bengaluru and the Bay Area, and Krutrim will have three major departments—silicon hardware and software, infrastructure and applied AI engineering, Aggarwal said.
Within the Ola Group, Ola Electric, Ola Cabs and Krutrim will be run as separate businesses. "There's no transactional tie-in with each other. They're all a part of the joint family," Aggarwal clarified.
Funding for Krutrim has been done largely through Aggarwal's personal wealth, along with participation from friends and family.
Work on Krutrim started about a year ago, he said. "The reason why we chose AI is because it's one of the most important technologies in the future and India needs to build its own stack. This is the time to build India’s own AI."
Krutrim has currently launched a ChatGPT-like chatbot for early access. "We will build for enterprises and consumers both, going ahead."
The data being fed into Krutrim as an LLM will be from proprietary datasets, data partnerships and other open platforms, Aggarwal said.
Krutrim will also be building India's first AI supercomputer, on top of its own infrastructure capabilities. "It will take about two years to be ready," he said.
