India is Finally Making AI Happen for Real

This week has been a rollercoaster for many of us, with a slew of announcements and updates from the Indian AI ecosystem.?

Ola Krutrum recently announced its entry into the cloud arena with Krutrim AI Cloud, aiming to rival tech giants like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud by offering cost-effective AI solutions. It also launched an Android app alongside various developer tools.?

This week, SML introduced the alpha version of Hanooman, a fast and multilingual AI chatbot. It aims to outperform competitors like ChatGPT by focusing on specific use cases and eventual open-source availability. In the coming months, the company plans to launch an LLM-based search engine platform similar to Perplexity AI for Indian users. Check out our exclusive interview with the founder of SML here. >>

Another AI startup based in Hyderabad, Subtl.ai, is developing an AI-powered enterprise platform—a Perplexity for enterprise—that provides trusted answers and actionable insights directly from private and sensitive documents without data privacy concerns.

Meanwhile, Sarvam AI is gearing up to release its Indic voice LLM soon.?

There’s more. Soket AI Labs, India’s first startup focusing on building solutions to achieve AGI, recently unveiled Pragna-1B. This open-source, multilingual AI model designed for Indic languages achieves advanced linguistic inclusivity and efficient on-device performance.

AI Infrastructure: Sunil Gupta, the chief of Hiranandani Group’s data centre firm, Yotta Data Services, recently said India could build five GPT-4 models simultaneously using its existing infrastructure.?

“I have ordered 16,000 [GPUs], so if there are five customers each wanting to make a GPT-4, I can simultaneously handle their load,” said Gupta, aka the ‘Data Centre Man of India’.?

Yotta Data Services has received the first tranche of 4,000 GPUs from NVIDIA, with plans to scale up to 32,768 units by the end of 2025.?

The state-of-the-art chips from NVIDIA will power Yotta’s upcoming Shakti Cloud platform, positioning it as the 10th quickest supercomputer globally.

AI Investments: Azim Premji's investment firm, Premji Invest, recently announced its plans to allocate a portion of its $10 billion fund to AI-focused companies, enhancing its investment tools and gaining insight into emerging technologies.

Robotics: Bengaluru-based CynLr unveiled 'CyRo’, a semi-humanoid robot with advanced vision and intelligence, currently being piloted by major automakers like General Motors and Denso for enhanced industrial automation. Check out an exclusive interview with the founder of CynLr here. >>

Last week, former Tech Mahindra chief CP Gurnani and InterGlobe Enterprises promoter Rahul Bhatia announced the launch of AIonOS, a joint venture to transform businesses into AI-native enterprises, focusing on productivity and digital transformation.

Another former Tech Mahindra executive, Jagdish Mitra, launched an AI startup last week. The business aims to boost productivity in manufacturing, retail, and sports technology by focusing on value-driven AI solutions.

A few months ago, Zoho chief Sridhar Vembu unveiled the company’s AI strategy, focusing on developing smaller, more effective AI models from scratch and establishing its GPU infrastructure to enhance cost efficiency and domain-specific solutions.

Announced last year, Tech Mahindra's Project Indus, a generative AI model tailored for Hindi and its dialects, is also nearing launch as it enters beta testing.?

Best Firm for Data Scientists >>

[Best Firms for Data Scientists is one of India's biggest workplace certification platforms in data science. To nominate your organisation for the certification, you can fill out the form here.]

Top Stories of the Week >>?

Software Engineering Jobs are Dying

“Winter is coming for software engineering,” said Deedy Das from Menlo Ventures, suggesting that by the end of 2024, software engineering roles will almost become a distant memory. Check out the complete story here.?

Why Big Tech Layoffs are Good News for India

Last month, a sweeping wave of layoffs hit major tech giants like Tesla, Google, and Apple, affecting over 20,000 employees. This comes amid a broader trend of job cuts in the industry that impacted over 70,000 individuals throughout the year. However, there might be a silver lining for the Indian employees looking for jobs. Read more here.?

Microsoft Eats into Amazon’s Cloud Market Share

The $76-billion global cloud infrastructure services market has once again been captured by the big three with a 67% combined market share. Amazon continues to dominate the cloud market with a 31% share, taking a 1% hit from the previous year. Microsoft, on the other hand, has been surging forward, while Google remains stagnant at 11%. Read the full story here.?

People & Tech >>?

Guardians of the Syntax: Securing Enterprise LLM Systems against Emerging Threats

In an exclusive interview with AIM, Chinmaya Kumar Jena of Tredence discusses the unique cybersecurity challenges posed by large language models in enterprise systems, emphasising the need for robust security measures to protect sensitive data and proprietary code. Read the full story here.?

SAP has Over 1300 Customers in India

Subbu Ananth, CRO at SAP BTP, shares India's crucial role in SAP's global strategy with AIM, where over 1300 Indian customers represent a significant volume market. Notably, 60% of India's GDP is processed through SAP, and the company is pushing for AI democratisation across different organisational levels, foreseeing a 10 to 15% efficiency boost through generative AI and more.?

Check out the full interview here.?

AI Explained >>?

Hindi Mein RAG

In our latest episode of Analytics India Guru, AIM explores the capabilities of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), an AI technique that enhances the accuracy and reliability of generative models by integrating them with external information sources, and discusses its potential to transform LLMs.?

Data & AI Events >>?

Rakuten Product Conference 2024?

Rakuten India, in partnership with AIM, is hosting the fourth edition of the Rakuten Product Conference (RPC) '24, themed 'Innovation Reimagined: Enterprise SaaS & AI', as a virtual event on May 21-22, focusing on Enterprise SaaS and AI for data scientists and innovators globally.

Register now!?

AI Nuggets >>?

• OpenAI is likely to launch a new search engine, potentially rendering Perplexity AI obsolete, with a reveal event tentatively scheduled for May 9, 2024, ahead of Google I/O.
• OpenAI debuts the world's first AI-created music video, marking a significant step in integrating AI like Sora into mainstream entertainment production.
• Sam Altman, once again, surprised everyone by stating he is willing to spend up to $50 billion annually to develop AGI, regardless of the cost.
• Altman and tech leaders also believe that a one-person billion-dollar company is now feasible, especially with advances in AI and the internet.?
• Elon Musk's xAI expanded to Japan and aims to raise $6 billion in a competitive push against major AI companies like OpenAI.
• AWS and ShellKode collaborated to train 100,000 women developers in GenAI to enhance their skills amid the ongoing AI integration in the workplace.
• Google introduced a new feature in Chrome allowing users to chat with Gemini AI directly from the search bar by typing “@” and selecting “Chat with Gemini.”
• Microsoft partnered with Sanctuary AI to develop AI models for powering general-purpose humanoid robots, leveraging Azure's cloud resources.
• Oracle unveiled Oracle Database 23ai, a new database technology integrating AI capabilities.
• IBM expanded its software availability to 92 countries in the AWS Marketplace, enhancing global access to its AI and data technologies with 44 listings and 29 SaaS offerings.
• Meta AI chief Yann LeCun recently confirmed that the company spends $30 billion on one million NVIDIA GPUs for training its AI models, surpassing the Apollo Moon mission's budget.
• MongoDB partnered with Cohere to boost enterprise GenAI capabilities through the MongoDB AI Applications Program (MAAP), utilising Cohere’s advanced generative models for global business enhancement.
• Anthropic unveiled the Claude 3 Team Plan for enterprise collaboration, now accessible on iOS.?
• PyTorch’s latest update enables Llama 2 and Llama 3 to run on smartphones with zero coding, significantly boosting performance for mobile applications.
• Confluent said that India is one of the top 10 markets for its business growth. It also introduced new capabilities for its Apache Flink, including AI Model Inference and cost-effective Freight clusters, to simplify AI integration and enhance stream processing.
• American Express recently opened its largest global office in Gurugram, India, a nearly one million square foot, LEED Gold-certified facility focusing on sustainability and modern workplace design.
• Retired Air Marshal GS Bedi recently joined Synergy Quantum as vice president of business development to enhance the company's growth in airforce-related quantum technology applications.
• Bloomberg collaborated with AppliedXL to utilise AI for generating predictive news stories on Bloomberg Terminal, enhancing user insight into potential industry shifts.
• Denodo partnered with SITL to enhance Indian enterprises with data fabric and data mesh technologies to improve decision-making and operational efficiency.
• Atlassian launched Rovo, an AI-powered tool enhancing knowledge discovery and team collaboration within enterprises.?
• Securonix launched Securonix EON, leveraging Amazon Bedrock to combat AI-driven cyber threats with advanced, unified AI-powered security capabilities.
• Gyan AI introduced Paramanu-Ganita, a smaller-scale mathematical LLM that outperforms larger models like LLama and Falcon in complex mathematical problem-solving.