The proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) has given Indian entrepreneurs and founders a new lease on life at a time when finance is becoming increasingly scarce for the country’s startup environment, even as the Center continues to promote the industry.
Thus, the largest raise to date for an Indian AI firm, Sarvam AI, a domestic generative AI business, raised $41 million earlier this month in its Series A round headed by Lightspeed and supported by Vinod Khosla’s Khosla Ventures and Peak XV Partners.
Over 70 GenAI firms that have garnered over $440 million to date are said to be based in India.
Sarvam AI, which was founded by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, aims to create the “full-stack” for generative AI, from enterprise-grade authoring and deployment platforms to research-driven advances in training unique AI models.
In order to support voice-first interfaces and a wide range of Indian languages, Sarvam AI will train AI models. The business will collaborate with Indian businesses to jointly develop AI models that are domain-specific using their data.
Specifically for public-good applications, the AI startup seeks to deliver population-scale effect by stacking GenAI on top of the extremely successful India stack.
“GenAI gives us the chance to rethink how this technology can improve people’s lives. India has shown that it can harness technology in new ways,” Raghavan added.
The quest for ever-more-powerful AI is a fascinating and contentious endeavor. Since we are purposefully investing in technological and ecosystem breakthroughs that make this technology available to everyone, we named our firm Sarvam, which means “all” in Sanskrit,” Kumar continued.
Last week, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the minister of state for information technology and IT, announced that the government intends to fund and assist AI firms in the nation.
In order to develop large language models (LLMs), basic AI models, and diverse use cases for the nascent technology, the government will also allocate “financial resources.”
$10 billion in venture money was raised by GenAI startups worldwide in 2023—a massive 11% increase over 2021.
Dubbed “startup winter,” the decline in startup investment over the past few years has been caused by challenging macroeconomic conditions, rising interest rates, and recessionary concerns.
Adarsh Jain, CFA, Director of GlobalData’s Financial Markets team, stated, “Despite these challenges, GenAI startups raising record sums underscores the breakthrough nature of the technology, its widespread applicability, and its power to transform entire sectors and industries.”
Due to strong drivers, it is anticipated that GenAI companies would continue to draw investment far into 2024 and beyond.
According to GlobalData’s patent analytics, “for example, aside from accelerating startup funding, patenting activity in GenAI registered an 85% CAGR over the last five years,” stated Jain.
Businesses in all industries are increasing their human capital by actively seeking out talent with a focus on GenAI. Additionally, investors are reacting by raising the valuations of businesses that emphasize GenAI capabilities.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the AI Mission earlier this month, stating that its goal is to create AI’s processing capabilities in India. The government’s current goal is to increase the nation’s processing capacity for AI businesses.
In the upcoming year, over 63% of Indian businesses plan to proactively invest in AI and ML to automate their business operations. This is an 85% increase in AI spending from the previous year.
33% of these businesses are proactively planning to use Generative AI as a growth engine, according to the international software company Automation Anywhere. This indicates a forward-thinking attitude toward cutting-edge technologies in the goal of business transformation and optimization.
“The next stage of global evolution and economic expansion are both dependent on productivity. According to Ankur Kothari, co-founder and chief operating officer of Automation Anywhere, “intelligent automation, including AI and generative AI, are proving crucial to solving the massive productivity crisis unfolding in front of us.”
Bhavish Aggarwal, the founder and CEO of Ola, unveiled “Krutrim,” dubbed “India’s own AI” model.
The Sanskrit word for “artificial,” Krutrim, will be available in two flavors: Krutrim Pro, which is a more sophisticated model, and Krutrim, which is a base model trained on 2 trillion tokens and unique datasets.
AI designed with India in mind should be able to recognize the distinctiveness and appropriate cultural context. It must be taught using special datasets that are only available to us. It must be affordable and accessible to India, according to Aggarwal.
Twenty-two Indian languages, including Marathi, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Odia, Gujarati, and Malayalam, are supported by “Krutrim,” which can also produce content in roughly ten of them.
An indigenous generative AI platform called BharatGPT has been launched by CoRover.ai in collaboration with Google Cloud. Google reportedly plans to invest $4 million in CoRover.ai, a firm that develops conversational AI.
“Our goal with BharatGPT is to create a platform that thrives in a cloud-first world while encapsulating India’s rich cultural legacy. According to Ankush Sabharwal, CEO of CoRover.ai, “BharatGPT, which is built on Google Cloud’s fortified infrastructure, confidently addresses these challenges, carving out a niche as a trusted AI mainstay that is grounded and reliable.”
