What is Krutrim AI, India’s ChatGPT alternative?

Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal on Monday launched the beta version of Krutrim AI – a large language model (LLM) similar to Open AI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini.

“This is a start for us and our first-generation product. Lots more to come and this will also improve significantly as we build on this base,” Aggarwal posted on X.

But what do we know about Krutrim?

Let’s take a clos`er look:

Krutrim, a Sanskrit word, means artificial.

According to the company website, the chatbot has been trained on over 2 trillion ‘tokens.’

According to Hindustan Times, these are sub-words used in conversations.

Krutrim can generate responses in English, Hindi and eight other Indian languages.

It can support all 22 scheduled languages – that is to say those that are listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution.

These include Gujarati, Assamese, Kannada, Bengali, Kashmiri.

The website says the AI has ‘an Indian ethos, natively.’

It generates text with an innate sense of India’s cultural sensibilities and relevance, the website adds.

Moneycontrol reported that the chatbot was trained by a team of computer scientists in Bengaluru and San Francisco.

The chatbot will be available in two versions – its basic model named Krutrim base and a more complex model called Krutrim Pro.

Krutrim in December unveiled its base Large Language Model (LLM).

The firm claimed its AI models outperform several open-source LLMs trained on similar amounts of data.

It also claimed to outperform OpenAI’s GPT-4 when it comes to Indic language performance.

According to Indian Express, the chatbot responds to voice commands.

The website reported that Krutrim Pro will launch in the fourth quarter of this year.

The Pro version chatbot will be multimodal in nature.

Meaning, it will be able to understand and work with different formats, including text, audio, image, and video, at the same time.

It will also have larger knowledge, advanced problem-solving and task execution capabilities.

The model will also power Krutrim’s conversational AI assistant that claims to understand and speak multiple Indian languages fluently.

“We take inspiration from all architectures that are open source, but there are a lot of modifications we did to make it efficient for multilingual contexts … plain vanilla architectures will not work. The entire pre-training, which is the more sophisticated part, is also a major way in which this is better,” Krutrim’s strategy head Ravi Jain told Economic Times.

According to Hindustan Times, Krutrim Si Designs was launched in April 2023.

Aggarwal and Krishnamurthy Venugopala Tenneti, a board member at ANI Technologies Limited, the parent company of Ola Cabs and Ola Electric, set up the company.

Moneycontrol reported that the company will conduct itself as a separate entity from the Ola Group.

Aggarwal at the event said the firm does not use data from Ola’s ohter businesses to train its AI models.

‘First AI unicorn’

Ola group’s AI firm Krutrim in January raised $50 million at a valuation of $1 billion in a funding round led by Matrix Partners.

This makes Krutrim the first artificial intelligence unicorn from India.

“Krutrim , India’s own AI company focused on building the complete AI computing stack, announced the successful closure of its first round of funding. The funding round, led by prominent investors such as Matrix Partners India and others, garnered an investment of USD 50 million in equity at a valuation of $1 billion,” the company said.

The funds raised will be instrumental in accelerating the company’s mission to revolutionize the AI landscape, drive innovation, and expand its reach globally.

“India has to build its own AI, and at Krutrim, we are fully committed towards building the country’s first complete AI computing stack. We are thrilled to announce the successful closure of our first funding round, which not only validates the potential of Krutrim ’s innovative AI solutions but also underscores the confidence investors have in our ability to drive meaningful change out of India for the world,” Aggarwal said.

Krutrim said it would run an early access programme until January 2024 with a simple sign up page on the website

Krutrim said its open APIs (tool to embed it with apps) will open to all developers by February 2024.

With inputs from agencies