The artificial intelligence (AI) industry in India is expanding aggressively. With the third-largest startup environment globally, India is expected to develop at an astounding rate of 12–15% per year. Indian AI startups raised a noteworthy $1.11 billion in financing rounds in 2022.

By 2023, that figure had increased by an astounding 12 times! This financial boom is a testament to Indian AI's enormous promise. Bengaluru, the country's tech capital, is a haven for innovation; in 2023, 45% of funded AI companies came from there.

In this segment, discover the five most fascinating and innovative AI businesses originating from India.

5 AI startups from India that you should watch closely

These are the top 5 AI startups from India that are causing waves in the AI community and among enterprises.

1. Ola Krutrim AI

The international Indian ridesharing startup Ola has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant called Ola Krutrim AI. Krutrim AI, which will launch in 2024, is intended to serve as a personalized assistant for Indian users, particularly those who do not know English.

With its recent $50 million fundraising at a $1 billion value, Krutrim AI has emerged as the first unicorn startup of 2024 in India.

Krutrim AI (based on large language models/LLMs) is trained on a vast corpus of text and code that includes social contexts, cultural references, and regional languages unique to India. This makes it possible for Krutrim AI to comprehend user inquiries and answer to them in a way that respects Indian vernacular and culture.

Users can get assistance from Krutrim AI with things like composing emails, researching information, picking up new skills, organizing trips, and discovering recipes.

Several Indian languages, including English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, Kannada, Bengali, Gujarati, and Hinglish, are supported by Krutrim AI. (However, the first launch was limited to English.)

Founders:Bhavish Aggarwal

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2. Yellow.AI

Yellow.AI has quickly emerged as a global leader in the field of conversational AI. The Indian AI startup is founded by three friends with a passion for transforming customer interactions and communication with brands. Their Dynamic Automation Platform, powered by generative AI, delivers autonomous, human-like experiences for customers and employees.

About thirty percent of the 120 GenAI bots that Yellow.AI deployed for companies worldwide this fiscal year were used in India.

Through intuitive, personalized, and real-time interactions, Yellow.AI seeks to improve business-to-consumer interactions globally.

The company's innovative solutions and customer-centric approach drive higher customer satisfaction and employee engagement.

Brightspeed Venture, Salesforce Ventures, Westbridge Capital, Sapphire Ventures and Lightspeed Venture are among Yellow.AI's investors who support their mission and provide them the ability to upend the market.

Yellow.AI, which has a presence in the US, Malaysia, India, Singapore, UAE, and Indonesia, is committed to using AI-powered automation to revolutionize enterprises.

According to a report from the Economic Times, Yellow.AI plans to go public in the US by 2026–2027, which is when the market is predicted to bounce back from the present macroeconomic slowdown.

Founders:Raghu Ravinutala,Jaya Kishore GollareddyandRashid Khan

3. Sarvam.AI

Five months after AI experts Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar founded Sarvam.AI, a young Indian startup, the company has raised over $40 million in funding (from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Peak XV Partners and Khosla Ventures). The startup wants to use its unique strategy to completely transform India's AI market.

With the goal of understanding and producing material more efficiently than current models, Sarvam AI focuses on creating Large Language Models (LLMs) specifically for Indian languages.

Additionally, the team at Sarvam.AI is now developing a large-scale platform of enterprise quality for developing and implementing GenAI applications. What distinguishes them is their focus on natural language processing and voice-based interfaces.

Sarvam.AI is also developing capabilities to lower food waste both domestically and globally. Their partnership with a significant technological company suggests expanding market reach.

Additionally, Microsoft and Sarvam AI have teamed up to create voice-based generative AI and make Sarvam AI's extensive language models accessible on Azure. CEO Satya Nadella made the announcement of this partnership while he was in India.

Founders:Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar

4. Haptik

Haptik is another happening Indian conversational AI startup that aims to enhance customer experiences across various industries. The organization offers industry-specific solutions to help customers find information efficiently through their preferred mediums or channels.

In short, Haptik provides a comprehensive suite of customer experiences that can be used on a single platform to meet the demands of organizations.

The Best-in-class Natural Language Understanding (NLU) engine from Haptik, which enables human-like conversational experiences, is one of the company's primary products. Businesses can extract insightful information from real-time chat data by combining this NLU engine with sophisticated analytics capabilities.

Businesses can easily drive tailored conversations across channels using Haptik's out-of-the-box connectors with a variety of customer experience solutions.

Strategic alliances between Haptik and Jio, Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, and MyGov India show the company's dedication to providing dependable and scalable solutions.

Among Haptik's success stories are large annual savings for companies, improved Interactive Voice Assistant (IVA) accuracy, high automation rates, and the monthly resolution of millions of requests from customers.

Founders:Aakrit Vaish and Swapan Rajdev

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5. MachineHack

Finally, MachineHack is a noteworthy Indian startup that should be closely monitored as it makes its way through the GenAI ecosystem. The company, which was founded in 2021, focuses in holding coding competitions, courses, evaluations, and AI hackathons.

Because of the platform's notable growth pace, AI and coding education in India have benefited greatly from it.

A noteworthy product from MachineHack GenAI is an AI co-pilot that uses proprietary algorithms and GPT-4 to help developers become better coders. To help developers improve their skills, this co-pilot makes code recommendations and suggestions.

Founders:Bhasker Gupta and Krishna Rastogi

Wrapping up

India's AI market is expanding quickly, and a number of creative entrepreneurs are setting the pace. These businesses are advancing AI technology and have the potential to have a big influence on India and the rest of the world.

If you're engaged in any interesting activities within India's emerging AI ecosystem, do leave a comment. We will explore that further in our next postings.

Additional Resources

11 exciting AI startups in India

Top 10 startups of India that are working on artificial intelligence and machine learning