Bhavish Aggarwal's Krutrim bets on India-first AI to rival global peers

Business Standard

14 hours ago

Krutrim, the artificial intelligence startup founded by Ola's Bhavish Aggarwal, is positioning its recently launched flagship assistant, Kruti, to stand apart from global peers like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini by leveraging deep local integration, multilingual capabilities, and agentic intelligence tailored to India's unique digital ecosystem.
The company calls Kruti India's first agentic AI, capable of booking cabs, paying bills, and generating images while supporting 13 Indian languages using a localised large language model.
In the Indian context, the firm competes with global AI giants such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, as well as local players such as Sarvam AI and CoRover.ai.
'Our key differentiator will come with integrating local services,' said Sunit Singh, Senior Vice-President for Product at Krutrim. 'That's not something that will be very easy for global players to do.'
Krutrim has already integrated India-specific services, with plans to scale this integration further. The strategy aims to embed Kruti deeply into Indian digital life, allowing it to perform functional tasks through local service connections. This is an area where international competitors may struggle due to regulatory and infrastructural complexities in the Indian market.
Voice-first
As Krutrim positions Kruti to serve India's linguistically diverse population, the company is doubling down on voice-first, multilingual AI as a core enabler of scale and accessibility. Navendu Agarwal, Group CIO of Ola, emphasised that India's unique language landscape demands a fundamentally different approach from Western AI products.
'India is a voice-first world. So we are building voice-first models,' Agarwal said, outlining Krutrim's strategy to prioritise natural, speech-driven interactions.
Currently, Kruti supports voice commands in multiple Indian languages, with plans underway to expand that footprint. Agarwal said the long-term vision is to enable seamless, speech-based interactions that go deeper into local dialects.
The company's multilingual, voice-first design is central to its go-to-market strategy, especially in reaching non-English speakers in semi-urban and rural India. The plan also includes integrating with widely used Indian services and government platforms.
Krutrim's long-term vision for Kruti centres on true agentic intelligence, where the assistant can act autonomously on behalf of users. Whether it's 'book me a cab to the airport' or 'order my usual lunch', Kruti understands intent and executes tasks without micromanagement.
'Think about it—a super agent which can do food, do apps, provide you help and education information and which can also manage your budget and finance,' said Agarwal. 'So that's what is a mega-agent, or the assistant which is communicating with all of them seamlessly wherever it is needed.'
Hybrid technology
Rather than relying solely on a single in-house model, Krutrim has opted for a composite approach aimed at optimising accuracy, scalability and user experience, according to Chandra Khatri, the company's Vice-President and Head of AI.
'The goal is to build the best and most accurate experience,' Khatri said. 'If that means we need to leverage, say Claude for coding, which is the best coding model in the world, we'll do that.'
Kruti is powered by Krutrim's latest large language model, Krutrim V2, alongside open-source systems. The AI agents evaluate context-specific needs and choose from this suite of models to deliver tailored responses.
Investments
Krutrim reached unicorn status last year after raising $50 million in equity during its inaugural funding round. The round, which valued the company at $1 billion, included participation from investors such as Matrix Partners India.
Earlier this year, company founder Bhavish Aggarwal announced an investment of ₹2,000 crore in Krutrim, with a commitment to invest an additional ₹10,000 crore by next year. The company also launched the Krutrim AI Lab and released some of its work to the open-source community.
As Krutrim's AI assistant begins to interface with highly contextual and personal user data, the company emphasises a stringent, India-first approach to data privacy and regulatory compliance. The company employs internal algorithms to manage and isolate user data, ensuring it remains secure and compartmentalised.
While Krutrim is open to competing globally, it remains committed to addressing India's market complexities first. 'We don't shy away from going global. But our primary focus is India first,' Agarwal said.
Krutrim's emphasis on embedded, action-oriented intelligence—capable of not just understanding queries but also fulfilling them through integrations—could define its edge in the increasingly competitive AI landscape. Here, localisation and service depth may become as critical as raw model power.