Krutrim, an artificial intelligence startup founded by Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal, said it has raised a round of funding that values it at $1 billion. The startup, founded last year, is the fastest to become a unicorn in India, it claimed in a press statement. It is also the first Indian AI startup to become a unicorn, he said.
Matrix Partners India – which has also backed Aggarwal’s other two startups, ride-hailing platform Ola and EV startup Ola Electric – led the $50 million “seed round” in Krutrim. TechCrunch reported last year that Aggarwal was in talks to raise $50 million for his new AI venture.
Krutrim, which means “artificial” in Sanskrit, builds a large language model that is trained in local Indian languages in addition to English. The startup plans to launch a voice-enabled AI chat assistant that understands and speaks multiple Indian languages, the startup said.
It plans to make a beta version of its eponymous chatbot available to consumers next month and follow that with an API release to developers and businesses. On its website, Krutrim says it also plans to develop an in-house capability to make chips optimized for artificial intelligence computing. TechCrunch earlier reported that Aggarwal’s new venture will explore chip development and design.
Krutrim is Aggarwal’s third venture. Ola, its first, leads the ride-hailing market in India and is eyeing profitability. Ola Electric leads the electric two-wheeler market in India and recently filed the documents for a $662 million initial public offering.
“India needs to build its own AI, and in AI, we are fully committed to building the country’s first comprehensive AI computing stack,” Aggarwal said in a statement. “We are excited to announce the successful close of our first round funding, which not only validates the potential of innovative AI solutions, but also underscores the confidence investors have in our ability to drive meaningful change from India to the world.
The investment in Krutrim comes at a time when investors worldwide are rushing to identify and support AI, on the premise that advances in AI will make countless industries more efficient and startups at the forefront will deliver generational returns.
Despite being home to one of the largest startup ecosystems in the world, India has yet to make a significant impact on the AI race. Indian contenders are yet to emerge and challenge the dominance of big model language titans like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Amazon-backed Anthropic or Google’s Bard.
Indian powerhouse Reliance teamed up with Nvidia in September, revealing plans to build a large language model that will be trained in different Indian languages. But the company – run by Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man – has yet to unveil its AI offering.
Peak XV and Lightspeed India recently backed Sarvam, an AI startup that is also building a large language model.
Training a large language model has proven to be a very expensive endeavor. OpenAI has raised over $11 billion to date, while Anthropic has also raised billions from investors including Google and Amazon. Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI is in talks to raise up to $6 billion at a valuation of about $20 billion, the Financial Times reported on Friday.
