Ola’s Founder Unveils Krutrim AI Labs for Indian-Focused AI Development

Bhavish Aggarwal, the founder and CEO of Ola, has revealed the establishment of Krutrim AI Labs which aims to create artificial intelligence tailored specifically for India. An initial investment of Rs 2,000 crore has been announced, with plans to increase this commitment to Rs 10,000 crore by the following year. This funding will facilitate the setup of the AI lab and the development of sophisticated AI models that cater to Indian users.

Aggarwal stated that the Krutrim AI Lab will focus on tackling issues related to Indic languages, data scarcity, and cultural relevance. He noted on X (previously known as Twitter) that the team has been engaged in AI development for a year and is now making their research accessible to the open-source community, along with the release of various technical documents. Their primary objective is to enhance AI capabilities for Indian languages, address data scarcity, and respect cultural nuances.

Open-Source AI Models and Benchmarks

As part of its open-source efforts, Krutrim is launching several AI models, including:

• Krutrim 2: An enhanced Large Language Model (LLM).
• Chitrarth 1: A Vision Language Model.
• Dhwani 1: A Speech Language Model.
• Vyakhyarth 1: An Indic embedding model.
• Krutrim Translate 1: A text-to-text translation model.

Furthermore, Krutrim has also introduced BharatBench, a benchmark designed specifically for assessing the performance of Indic AI technologies.

Building the First GB200 AI Supercomputer

In collaboration with NVIDIA, Krutrim is in the process of constructing India’s first GB200 AI supercomputer, which is anticipated to be operational by March. This supercomputer is set to be the largest AI supercomputer in India by the year’s end.

Aggarwal underscored that despite the rapid progress Krutrim has made within just a year, the journey for AI development in India is far from complete. By making its models open-source, the company aims to foster collaboration and contribute to the establishment of a robust AI ecosystem in the country.

Funding and Investment Growth

In December 2024, Aggarwal secured a funding solution for his AI endeavour, Krutrim SI Designs, by pledging Ola Electric shares to generate debt through debenture issuance. So far, Krutrim has successfully raised around $75 million and entered the unicorn category in January of the previous year. Notable investors include Z47 (formerly Matrix), the Sarin Family, among others.