There’s a new AI in town, and it’s not ChatGPT. Ola, an Indian ride-hailing company, has developed Krutrim, its own original large language model intended at conquering the local market.
This week, CEO Bhavish Aggarwal took center stage in Bengaluru to demonstrate Krutrim’s language talents. It turns out that this AI can react to queries not only in English, but also in ten distinct Indian languages. Aggarwal exhibited Krutrim’s multilingual abilities in a live demo, moving between languages such as Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu.
So, why create an Indian chatbot when there are already major participants in the market? Aggarwal believes that foreign AI models do not understand the complexities and richness of Indian languages and culture. According to Aggarwal, Krutrim has been designed exclusively for Desi users, created from the ground up, and trained on a massive dataset of 2 trillion tokens acquired from local sources. As a result, AI is better at comprehending contextual references and colloquial expressions in Indian languages.
Ola’s AI models are available in two flavors: Krutrim and Krutrim Pro. The fundamental Krutrim model understands 22 Indian languages and can respond in 10 of them. On benchmarks for Indian-language understanding, it appears to outperform models such as GPT-4 and Llama.
It may also use voice as input and answer in voice, similar to the most recent versions of ChatGPT.
Meanwhile, Krutrim Pro, which Ola hopes to debut next quarter, is being marketed as a more powerful, multi-modal model for enterprise use.
Aggarwal, for one, believes that India requires domestic AI solutions designed specifically for our needs. Krutrim was designed from the ground up with an India-first mindset – high local relevance at a low cost.
Starting next month, anyone can sign up for the basic chatbot on the Krutrim website. In February, Ola will also release Krutrim APIs for corporations and developers to incorporate into their own products and services.
