Touted as the Elon Musk of India, Bhavish Aggarwal’s AI startup, Ola Krutrim, made headlines as India’s first AI unicorn. The startup is all about making AI for India, ensuring that data doesn’t go out of the country. The vision of the company is to develop a full AI computing stack, including cloud infrastructure and advanced silicon for data centres.
Aggarwal, born in Ludhiana, Punjab, is best known as the co-founder and CEO of Ola Cabs and the founder of Ola Electric. He completed his bachelor's degree in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay in 2008. After graduation, Aggarwal began his career at Microsoft Research India, where he worked for two years, filing two patents and publishing three papers in international journals.
In September 2010, inspired by a personal experience during a road trip, Aggarwal co-founded Ola Cabs with his IIT Bombay classmate Ankit Bhati.
Cut to present, his AI venture Krutrim has developed an AI model that can generate text with a sense of Indian cultural sensibilities and relevance. It was rolled out in 22 Indian languages in beta version from February 2024.
Looking ahead, Krutrim plans to design, build, and launch its first AI chip by 2026. The company is working on a series of chips: ‘Bodhi’ for AI, ‘Sarv’ for general computing, and ‘Ojas’ for edge computing, with a goal to release the Bodhi-II chip in 2028.
Aggarwal has also introduced Krutrim AI Cloud to compete with Microsoft Azure and AWS. The service is available for free to developers until Diwali 2024.