Maverick in a Maze

Bhavish Aggarwal's AI unicorn, Krutrim, is grappling with flagging traction, a flurry of leadership exits, employee lay-offs and waning staff morale

- Nabodita Ganguly

In late 2023, the confidence of India’s tech ecosystem was sinking into a bottomless pit.

A year had passed since the launch of ChatGPT and billions of dollars were already being pumped into idea-stage artificial intelligence (AI) startups in Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, OpenAI founder Sam Altman had visited India a few months earlier and said that the country shouldn't aspire to make foundation models. Although seething Indian entrepreneurs took jibes at Altman on social media, nobody was willing to put money where their mouth was.

But Bhavish Aggarwal was not going to take it lying down.

Within a couple of months, the Ola founder created a blitzkrieg by announcing Krutrim, a startup that would play across the AI value chain from chips to chatbots, and propelling it to the unicorn club.

“He [Altman] came to India and said, ‘Tumse na ho payega [You won't be able to do it]’. One day, we'll go to the Bay Area and say, “Tumse na ho payega’,” he retorted in a podcast subsequently.

For Aggarwal it was about national pride. He wanted to challenge tech giants in their own dens—OpenAI in models, Nvidia in chips and Microsoft in data centres—to build an entirely sovereign AI infrastructure.

And this meant it was time to unleash the fast-and-furious streak in him once again.

From the beginning Aggarwal didn’t have a choice but to make velocity his calling card. Otherwise, there was no way that Ola could compete with Uber, a global giant with an unending trove of capital, in ride-hailing.

For example, when Uber launched a bike-taxi feature in 2016, Ola followed with the offering in a span of 24 hours.

Each time Uber used its deep pockets to carve out a significant market share, Aggarwal hit the ground running to raise more cash to fight back.