Ola, the Indian ride-hailing giant, is gearing up to challenge global tech majors in the arena of energy-efficient data centers with its AI platform Krutrim. Founder Bhavish Aggarwal announced Ola’s ambitious plans to revolutionize cloud services, promising to deliver the lowest prices and superior energy efficiency compared to industry giants like Microsoft and Google.
At a recent event, Aggarwal unveiled Krutrim Cloud, an AI cloud platform aimed at enterprises, researchers, and developers, with a particular focus on meeting the needs of Indian developers. “We are building our own technology to achieve energy management and create the most efficient data centers globally. I am willing to compete with Microsoft, Google, or whoever to say, we will do better than them,” Aggarwal stated emphatically.
Aggarwal criticized big tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Apple for operating closed ecosystems that restrict developers’ work on their platforms. He emphasized Krutrim’s overarching ambition to develop a full-stack AI platform that enables developers to build applications more easily, quickly, and affordably.
The high costs associated with cloud services have long been a barrier for startups, Aggarwal noted. Ola aims to change that narrative by offering Krutrim Cloud at competitive prices, challenging the status quo in the industry.
Ola claims that its Krutrim assistant app is powered by its own large language model, trained on over 2 trillion tokens, with the most extensive representation of Indic data. Currently, Krutrim understands and generates intelligent responses in over 10 Indian languages, with plans to expand to all 22 official languages in the near future.
Aggarwal stressed that Krutrim is not just an Indian platform but one that is poised to make an impact globally. “We are going to develop many more models that are useful in the Indian context. We are working on voice models, vision-based models, and more,” he added.
By focusing on energy efficiency and affordability, Ola aims to disrupt the cloud services market dominated by global players. With Krutrim, the company is not only offering a competitive alternative but also spearheading innovation in AI and data center technology, promising a brighter future for Indian developers and businesses in the global tech landscape.
