Ola unveils AI model Krutrim, designed for Indian languages – The Indian Express
Forget ChatGPT – there’s a new AI in town. Indian ride-hailing firm Ola has unveiled its own homegrown large language model called Krutrim that’s aimed at dominating the local market.
CEO Bhavish Aggarwal took center stage in Bengaluru this week to showcase Krutrim’s language skills. Turns out this AI can respond to queries not just in English, but 10 different Indian languages as well. Aggarwal demonstrated Krutrim’s multilingual chops through a live demo, with the AI switching between languages like Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu.
So why develop an Indian chatbot when there are already big players in the space? Well, Aggarwal feels foreign AI models don’t grasp the complexity and nuance of Indian languages and culture. Krutrim has been crafted specifically for Desi users, built from the ground up and trained on a ginormous dataset of 2 trillion tokens collected from local sources, according to Aggarwal. The end result is an AI that’s better at understanding contextual references and colloquial phrases specific to Indian languages.
Ola’s AI models come in two versions – Krutrim and Krutrim Pro. The base Krutrim model comprehends 22 Indian languages and can form responses in 10 languages. It apparently scores higher than models like GPT-4 and Llama on benchmarks for Indian-language understanding. It can also use voice as input and respond in voice as well, much like the latest versions of ChatGPT.
Meanwhile, Krutrim Pro is being touted as a more powerful, multi-modal model for enterprise use, which Ola plans to launch next quarter.
For his part, Aggarwal believes India needs homegrown AI solutions built specially for our needs. Krutrim has been created from scratch using an India-first approach – high local relevance at budget pricing.
Starting next month, anyone can sign up on the Krutrim website to access the basic chatbot. Ola will also be launching Krutrim APIs in February for companies and developers to integrate into their own products and services. 
