A ‘Jio moment’ in AI was long overdue – and Mukesh Ambani has finally delivered it! At its 47th Annual General Meeting (AGM), Reliance Industries unveiled a series of AI initiatives. 

Major highlights included the introduction of Jio Brain, Jio AI-Cloud, Jio Phone Call AI, and the vision for a national AI infrastructure. 

Ambani, the RIL chairman and managing director, emphasised AI’s central role in the company’s future, showcasing innovations like JioBrain, an AI service platform that will enhance operations across all Reliance enterprises. 

Jio also introduced an AI-powered feature designed to transcribe, summarise, and translate phone conversations in real time. 

To support these and other AI-driven initiatives, Reliance announced the establishment of gigawatt-scale AI data centres in Jamnagar, Gujarat, powered by green energy. These centres will be part of a broader plan to create AI inference facilities nationwide, ready to meet India’s growing demand for AI capabilities.

Reliance Jio’s massive user base is one of the most valuable assets in its AI journey. Jio has over 490 million customers, each consuming an average of 30 GB of data monthly. This contributes to Jio carrying a staggering 8% of global data traffic.

“Thanks to Jio, India is now the world’s largest data market,” said Ambani.

The immense data pool provides Jio with unparalleled insights and the ability to continuously refine and scale its AI solutions, ensuring they are both effective and widely applicable.

How Reliance Jio is Scaling AI in India

Unlike many AI-focused companies such as OpenAI, which primarily cater to B2B markets, Jio is targeting the consumer market with its AI products and services. This is a strategy also adopted by Meta. The company made AI available on all its social media platforms and WhatsApp, taking AI directly to consumers.

Leveraging its deep understanding of consumer needs across sectors like healthcare, telecommunications, manufacturing, and customer services, Reliance is tailoring AI solutions that directly impact the working environment of its customers. 

This B2C approach sets Jio apart from global competitors, positioning it as a leader in consumer-centric AI innovations. With Jio AI, Ambani is bringing AI directly to its 490 million Jio customers.

Jio 100 GB Free AI Cloud Storage to Take On Google

Interestingly, Jio’s entry into the AI cloud market is a direct challenge to established players like Google Cloud. As part of its AI strategy, Jio introduced the Jio AI-Cloud Welcome Offer, which provides up to 100 GB of free cloud storage for Jio users starting this Diwali. 

In contrast, Google Cloud currently offers its basic plan of 100 GB for INR 130 per month, with more extensive plans like 200 GB at INR 210 per month and 2 TB at INR 650 per month. They even offer an AI Premium plan with 2 TB of storage and access to advanced AI models like Gemini Advanced. 

Jio’s free cloud offering is a strong counter to these paid plans, positioning it as a cost-effective alternative in the market. This aggressive pricing strategy is a replica of Jio’s launch in the telecom sector, where free services were initially offered to attract a massive user base. 

When Jio launched its 4G services, it offered free data and calls, which quickly attracted millions of users. This approach helped Jio capture over 100 million mobile subscribers within just 170 days, with data consumption on its network surpassing that of the US and doubling that of China.

So, just as Jio revolutionised the telecom industry, Jio Cloud aims to disrupt the cloud market by making AI services more affordable and accessible to the masses.

Jio Could be the Next Big Hyperscaler

Jio is also targeting the B2B cloud segment with their inference facilities. Earlier in 2023, Reliance Industries Limited announced its partnership with US-based chipmaker NVIDIA to advance AI in India.  This would put Jio in direct competition with the likes of AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

The collaboration aims to build AI infrastructure in India that they claim will be more powerful than the fastest supercomputer in the country. Further, NVIDIA said that it will provide access to Reliance with GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip and NVIDIA DGX Cloud for exceptional performance.

However, Jio is not alone in the market. Earlier this year, Yotta Data Services received the first tranche of 4,000 GPUs from NVIDIA. It further plans to scale up its GPU stable to 32,768 units by the end of 2025. And in 2023, Tata Communications entered into a partnership with NVIDIA to develop a similar hyperscale infrastructure.

According to sources, the upcoming NVIDIA India Summit is poised to reveal an expansion of the chipmaker’s collaboration with Reliance. Speculation is around the introduction of the Blackwell GPU and the NIM platform, with potential plans for employee training and upskilling in AI.

Interestingly, NVIDIA has also recently collaborated with Infosys to bring AI-driven, customer-centric solutions to the telecommunications industry. The question now is, who’s the telecom giant set to benefit from this AI revolution?

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Infosys has announced an expansion of its partnership with NVIDIA to bring AI-driven, customer-centric solutions to the telecommunications industry. 

The collaboration will integrate Infosys Topaz, an AI-first suite of services and platforms, with NVIDIA’s advanced generative AI technologies to deliver innovative solutions.

Anand Swaminathan, EVP & global industry leader – communications, media and technology, Infosys, expressed enthusiasm about the partnership and said, “Through our collaboration with NVIDIA, we are poised to unlock cutting-edge enterprise AI capabilities, helping global organisations improve business efficiency.”

As part of this partnership, Infosys has developed three generative AI solutions powered by Infosys Topaz. These solutions leverage NVIDIA’s NIM inference microservices, NeMo Retriever embedding models, and NeMo Guardrails to customise and deploy telco domain-specific large language models (LLMs). 

Additionally, Infosys Topaz utilises NVIDIA Riva for building real-time conversational AI pipelines, enabling real-time transcription and translation for call centre agents.

Highlighting the growing importance of generative AI in the telecommunications sector, Ronnie Vasishta, Senior Vice President of Telecom at NVIDIA, said, “Telcos are increasingly adopting generative AI solutions to improve the productivity of their businesses with smarter networks, more efficient operations, and enhanced customer service.”

One of the key innovations emerging from this partnership is the TOSCA Network Service Design solution, which employs NVIDIA’s generative AI to streamline and customise TOSCA (Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications) templates. 

This has resulted in a 28% reduction in latency and a 15% improvement in accuracy. Similarly, the NVIDIA-powered smart networking operations centre has demonstrated remarkable efficiency, reducing issue resolution times by 61% and improving accuracy by 22%.

Another highlight of the collaboration is Infosys Cortex, a generative AI-driven contact centre transformation platform. By leveraging Infosys Topaz and Infosys’ cloud suite, Infosys Cobalt, Cortex creates realistic customer simulations for trainee agents, offering an immersive training environment. 

These solutions are expected to enhance operational efficiencies, boost productivity, and optimise generative AI pipeline and inference costs.

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Semiconductor Fabless Accelerator Lab (SFAL) CoE for fabless semiconductors, has incubated 43 startups and benefited over 90 companies in the last five years. 

At a recent media briefing at the Vikasa Soudha, Karnataka IT/BT Minister Priyank Kharge highlighted the remarkable achievement and said, “With INR 21.56 crore investment, we’ve supported 200+ innovations, creating 800 ESDM jobs. SFAL startups have raised INR 140 crore, valued at INR 500 crore collectively.”

Success stories from SFAL include Calligo Technologies’ groundbreaking POSIT chip, Morphing Machines’ impressive $2.76 million funding round, and AB Circuits and Research Labs (ABCRL)’s pioneering automotive chip innovations.

As India becomes the world’s 2nd largest semiconductor consumer, Karnataka is positioning itself as a hub for semiconductor innovation and skilling, driving India’s transformation from a service-based to a product-driven economy.

India’s Semiconductor Plan

The Union Budget 2024-25 allocated Rs 21,936 crore to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), a 52% increase from the revised estimates of FY24, which were at Rs 14,421 crore.

This boost in funding underscores the government’s commitment to run multiple incentive schemes and programmes in key areas including semiconductor manufacturing, electronics production, and the India AI Mission. 

One of the focuses of this budget is the initiative to establish advanced semiconductor facilities in India, including compound semiconductors, silicon photonics, sensors fab; discrete semiconductor fab; semiconductor assembly, testing, marking and packaging (ATMP), and outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) facilities. 

This initiative alone saw its allocation nearly triple to INR 4,203 crore, up from INR 1,424 crore in FY24.

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There are millions of small businesses in the world, and in the future, all of them could have AI agents carry out functions like customer support and sales. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said there could be more AI agents in the world than humans.

Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla predicts that most consumer interactions online will involve AI agents handling tasks and filtering out marketers and bots. However, this raises a fundamental question: How do you differentiate between an AI agent and a human? Or worse – what if bad actors start using these agents?

In this context, Ben Colman, the co-founder and CEO of Reality Defender, made a bold statement: “Even someone with a PhD in computer science and computer vision can’t distinguish between what’s real and what’s fake.”  

Malicious actors have exploited fake identities to commit fraud, spread disinformation, and pull off countless deceptive schemes. With AI agents, these bad actors will be able to scale their operations with unprecedented efficiency and finesse.

What’s the Solution?

A recent research paper ‘Personhood Credentials’ (PHCs) explores an approach to tackle the growing challenge of distinguishing real people from AI online. These digital credentials allow users to prove they are human without revealing any personal information. 

The study is authored by researchers, including Srikanth Nadhamuni, former head of technology, Aadhaar; Steven Adler from OpenAI; Zoë Hitzig from the Harvard Society of Fellows; and Shrey Jain from Microsoft – all of whom have significant expertise in AI and technology.

The paper outlines two types of PHC systems – local and global – highlighting that they don’t need to rely on biometric data.

Imagine a government or another digital service provider issuing a unique credential to each person. To prove their ‘humanity’, users would employ clever cryptographic techniques called zero-knowledge proofs, allowing them to confirm their identity without revealing the specifics. 

These credentials would be stored securely on personal devices, offering a layer of online anonymity. 

The researchers suggest that PHCs could either replace or work alongside existing verification methods like CAPTCHAs and fingerprint scans, which are increasingly struggling to keep up with AI. 

Another possible solution could be a simple declaration – letting people know that they are interacting with an AI. Praveer Kochhar, the co-founder of KOGO Tech Labs, emphasised the importance of transparency. “Immediately as a call starts, there has to be a declaration that you’re talking to an AI agent. Once you declare that, it’s very straightforward,” Kochhar told AIM.

Earlier in April, a user on X, Alex Cohen, shared that Bland AI, a San Francisco-based firm, uses a tool for sales and customer support that can be programmed to make callers believe they are speaking with a real person.

As seen in the post above, had the bot not acknowledged being an “AI agent”, it would have been nearly impossible to differentiate its voice from that of a real woman.

Well, now chatbots are being deployed to fight against phone scammers. 

Dali Kaafar, a researcher at Macquarie University, Australia, and his team, have designed AI chatbots Malcolm and Ibrahim, to address the concern.

So, when scammers call, they think they’ve reached a potential victim. But they talk to “Malcolm”, an elderly man with an English accent, or “Ibrahim”, a polite man with an Egyptian accent. 

However, the same innovation can again be used to scam innocent people. So, in scenarios like these, mere declarations or a centralised credential system may not help you identify an AI agent. 

Are they Good Enough?

A McAfee Corp survey revealed that 69% of Indians think they don’t know or cannot tell the difference between an AI voice and a real voice. Also, there were reports earlier regarding the rise of fraudulent robocalls amid US elections.

So, how apt are these solutions for the rising AI crimes? 

Johanne Ulloa, the director of solutions consulting at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, warns, “Chatbots can still be misused to enhance the effectiveness of phishing emails, as there’s nothing to prevent them from generating texts that prompt customers to log in to an online account under the guise of security.” 

With the advent of text-to-speech technology, AI’s potential to compromise security grows even more concerning. Earlier this year, OpenAI showed off the voice capabilities of their GPT-40 model, which eerily sounded like Scarlett Johansson.

“These AI systems can take any text and replicate a sampled voice, leading to situations where people have received messages from what appeared to be relatives, only to discover their voices had been spoofed,” Ulloa noted. 

Many startups today are building AI agents that can be integrated via telephony, WhatsApp, and mobile applications. As AI agents become more prevalent, there is a need for more discussions in the industry and research for better tools to mitigate the risks of technology misuse.

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Imagine a world where traffic lights don’t just blink on and off, but work together as a team, making real-time decisions to keep traffic flowing smoothly and safely. This is the idea that XTraffic is bringing to life. 

By upgrading traffic lights to operate as an intelligent, coordinated system, XTraffic is not only reducing traffic jams but also giving city managers and citizens back their most valuable resource: time.

Behind this solution are the minds of Luke Adams, Everett Ivy, and Brian Payne, the founders of XTraffic. Their vision is about more than just reducing traffic; it’s about making smarter use of infrastructure and creating cities that are better equipped to handle the challenges of the future.

XTraffic is at the forefront of this movement, offering cities a smart, scalable solution that turns ordinary traffic lights into a self-optimising network. These upgraded lights communicate and coordinate with each other, adjusting to traffic conditions, emergencies, and other factors in real time. 

What makes XTraffic truly revolutionary is its approach to affordability and ease of implementation. Instead of requiring cities to spend massive amounts on new infrastructure, XTraffic’s system integrates seamlessly with existing technology. This lowers the barrier to entry, making it possible for cities to quickly deploy the system at a fraction of the cost—whether it’s for a single intersection or an entire metropolitan area.

Now, as part of Y Combinator, XTraffic is ready to connect with cities, investors, and partners who share their vision for smarter, safer urban environments. 

Project Green Light

Google’s Project Green Light is also working on similar lines to help cities, improve traffic flow at intersections and reduce stop-and-go emissions. 

With AI and insights from Google Maps driving trends, Green Light demonstrates a deep understanding of global road networks. This enables it to model traffic patterns and build intelligent recommendations for city traffic engineers to optimise traffic flow. 

Currently, Project Green Light operates at 70 intersections in 12 cities, including Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Kolkata. 

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IT giant, Infosys, has announced a collaboration with the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (Stanford HAI), a leading organisation shaping the future of AI. As a new member, Infosys will work closely with the institute’s esteemed faculty and researchers on pioneering AI initiatives.

James Landay, Stanford HAI Co-Director, expressed enthusiasm about the collaboration and said, “Together, we hope to push the boundaries of AI research and develop solutions that are ethical, trustworthy, and impactful.”

This partnership will focus on key areas including responsible AI, addressing the complex technical, policy, and governance challenges that enterprises face. Additionally, Infosys aims to enhance business processes through AI/ML and optimise AI models for cost efficiency and scalability using a specialised transformer-based approach that requires minimal data.

Mohammed Rafee Tarafdar, CTO of Infosys, added,“ By incorporating the latest AI research and proven practices into Infosys Topaz, we aim to drive innovation and deliver transformative AI solutions for our clients and industry.”

Earlier in May, Infosys and ServiceNow announced a strengthened collaboration to transform customer experiences with generative AI‑powered industry solutions, at ServiceNow’s annual customer and partner event Knowledge 2024.

And in June, GitHub partnered with Infosys to launch the first GitHub Center of Excellence in Bangalore. This initiative aimed to leverage AI and advanced software solutions to drive global economic growth.

Infosys Collaborates with Microsoft

In early 2023, Infosys and Microsoft joined forces to push the boundaries of what’s possible with AI. 

Nicole Dezen, Chief Partner Officer, Microsoft Corp, stated, “We’re pleased to expand our collaboration with Infosys to deliver innovative solutions, utilising Azure OpenAI Service and Azure Cognitive Services, that will help customers develop new business models, and realise new revenue streams.”

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As AI sweeps through practically every industry, audit and accounting are getting their due makeovers. However, not all firms are keeping pace with its adoption. 

According to the 2024 Generative AI in Professional Services report from the Thomson Reuters Institute, 30% of tax and accounting firms are still weighing the decision to adopt GenAI tools, while nearly half (49%) aren’t planning to use them anytime soon. 

However, a few big accounting firms have led the way with AI adoption.

Ernst & Young (EY), one of the largest accounting firms globally, has introduced AI into their audit services, deploying a powerful tool that reviews and analyses contracts and documents with a speed and precision that human efforts simply can’t match. 

KPMG has also embraced the AI revolution with its innovative platform, KPMG Ignite. This tech doesn’t just sift through data, it enhances the quality of insights delivered to clients. It also offers predictive insights, spots trends, and provides strategic guidance that pushes the boundaries of traditional accounting.  

Deloitte, too, is a pioneer in the AI accounting frontier. 

Working on similar lines, a Chennai-based startup, Fhero Accounting has leveraged AI in automating some of the repetitive tasks, to streamline data entry by automatically capturing and categorising financial transactions from various sources like invoices, receipts, and bank statements. 

This reduces the need for manual input, minimises errors, and ensures accurate, up-to-date records. 

Further, AI-driven analytics offer deeper insights into financial trends, enabling proactive decision-making for the clients. This enhances efficiency, accuracy, and client satisfaction.

How Does Automating Accounts Work?

The audit and accounting process has multiple stages, starting with data entry. Fhero uses an advanced optical character recognition (OCR) technology. So, when bills and documents are uploaded, the software automatically reads and processes them, seamlessly integrating the data into the client’s accounting system.

Next, a proprietary tool takes over, generating MIS reports and flagging discrepancies, like missed tax deductions or incorrect rates. It ensures all statutory compliances are met, even for backdated entries, automatically highlighting issues as they arise. It’s like having someone work on these tasks while you sleep.  

“This efficiency means what once took six to eight hours can now be done in just five to ten minutes, depending on the client’s size and transaction volume. For large clients, like those handling up to 500 crores annually, this process saves days of manual effort by completing tasks in mere minutes,” said Prashant Bothra, the CEO & founder of Fhero Accounting, in an exclusive interview with AIM. 

For instance, while working for the e-commerce industry, the firm ensures that the amount received from platforms like Myntra, Nykaa, and Flipkart matches the companies’ books, verifying every detail in seconds. 

“Our MIS reports are so comprehensive that you can drill down from a general P&L statement to the invoice level, making it easy for business owners to manage everything without diving into the complexities of accounting software,” Bothra added. 

Further, Fhero Accounting is also contemplating bringing LLMs into its business, aiming to enhance the value they deliver to their clients. 

Globally, startups like Klarity and Tabular function similarly, offering clients finished ledger entries that users export with just one click. 

India’s ‘Outsourcing’ Mindset 

Indians aged over 50 years are generally less inclined to outsource accounting services, primarily due to a combination of traditional values, a preference for personal relationships in financial matters, and a lack of familiarity with digital platforms.

Reflecting on the same, Bothra highlighted, “One of the major challenges we’ve observed in India, especially in the early stages of our work, is a cultural shift that is beginning to change only now.” 

He noted that major industrialisation in India happened in the 1990s, during the era of liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation. This period saw Indian companies going global and the rise of many entrepreneurs who are now in their 50s or 60s. 

But as the next generation steps into leadership roles, a shift in attitudes towards outsourcing is observed. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this change, as businesses now seek more value from their accountants rather than just having them on-site to handle routine tasks. 

“Previously, accountants were often seen as mere agents of the government, managing tax payments on behalf of companies. Today, business leaders are looking for deeper insights into their numbers, particularly in areas like cost, to inform their decision-making,” Fhero Accounting CEO said. 

What’s Next?

Going ahead, the startup plans to shift focus to building tech that customers can interact with directly so that its clients can have access to their numbers right at their fingertips, on their phones through an app. 

“As we input data, it will automatically sync with theirs. The app will also allow them to ask questions and handle everything they need from an accountant in one unified platform, rather than relying on separate apps for communication and report viewing.”

Working along similar lines, but exclusively for individuals, CRED has already introduced a feature called CRED Money. It leverages advanced data science to analyse spending patterns, provide personalised insights, and promote proactive personal financial management.

By making members more aware of their finances, CRED Money empowers them to take control and make informed financial decisions.

As India continues to up its AI game in finance, RBI governor Shaktikanta Das recently highlighted that the integration of AI into financial services brings significant opportunities for all stakeholders.

Speaking in Bengaluru at the Global Conference on Digital Public Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies, Das said, “Today, AI has forayed into the financial sector in the form of services like chatbots, internal data processing for intelligent alerts, fraud risk management, credit modelling, and other processes.” 

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In a major boost to Karnataka’s tech landscape, Chevron, a global leader in energy solutions, has announced a $1 billion investment to set up its largest global innovation center in Bengaluru. This Global Capability Center (GCC) will focus on advanced research in carbon sequestration and support the company’s operations worldwide. 

Chevron’s new facility, ENGINE or the Chevron Engineering and Innovation Excellence Centre, marks a significant milestone for the 145 year old, $200-billion company as it focuses on developing affordable, reliable, and cleaner energy solutions.

Located in Bengaluru, the tech center aims to hire 600 professionals by the end of 2025, with plans to expand further, according to India country head Akshay Sahni in an interview.

“Bengaluru has massive scientific talent, and I am thrilled that we will be building a team here which will be at the very nexus of solving today’s energy challenges and delivering tomorrow’s lower carbon energy solutions,” said Sahini. 

Bengaluru is home to 570 GCCs and commands 39% of India’s market share in the sector. It continues to solidify its status as the premier destination for global capability centers. The city’s talent poll and vibrant tech ecosystem serve as the key drivers for such major investments. 

India’s Tech Scene

India’s tech landscape continues to flourish as Cummins Group in July inaugurated its first IT Global Competency Center (GCC) at its Balewadi campus in Pune, Maharashtra. 

The GCC represents a pivotal component of Cummins’ extensive IT transformation strategy aimed at enhancing operational efficiencies and accelerating time-to-market for its products and services.

Recently, Flutter Entertainment, a global leader in online sports betting and iGaming, also inaugurated a GCC in Hyderabad, signifying a significant investment in the country’s skills market.

Similarly, Microsoft is also expanding its influence in India with the launch of a new innovation hub in Bengaluru, cementing the city’s status as a tech powerhouse. 

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With a population of over 1.4 billion, India clinched the title of the world’s most populous country, overtaking China in 2023. Strikingly, about 65% of the Indian population is aged between 15 and 64, giving the nation a significant advantage in leveraging the potential of a large working-age population. 

However, India’s global footprint extends beyond these numbers. The country is fast approaching another milestone, becoming the largest international student body in US universities.  

In the 2022-23 academic year alone, US universities saw an enrollment of nearly 2,69,000 Indian students, marking a remarkable 35% surge. 

This educational migration is part of a broader trend. As of 2024, over 5.4 million Indians made the USA their home, with more than 3.3 million categorised as Persons of Indian Origin. 

Recently, a user on X pointed out that of the Fortune 500 companies, 16 are led by Indian-origin CEOs. 

But is that something to brag about?

Story of Every Indian in the US 

Despite the rising number of Indian students pursuing education in the USA, their path is far from smooth. 

They face significant challenges in securing even internships, attributed to a slowdown in job growth and heightened competition during election years. Factors such as rising inflation, increased cost of living, and sponsorship difficulties further compound their challenges.

But for whoever cracks it there, it’s definitely an achievement to celebrate. 

When Parag Agrawal was appointed the CEO of Twitter in 2021, it sparked discussions on the factors contributing to the success of Indian-origin individuals in senior positions within tech companies. 

Some reports suggested that cultural shifts and strategic innovations spearheaded by Indian-origin CEOs played a pivotal role in the growth trajectory of companies like Microsoft and Google. 

Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella offered a different perspective in his book ‘Hit Refresh’. “Our industry does not respect tradition. What it respects is innovation,” he emphasised.  

Indians Stay, but Don’t Rule

Even as Indians migrate to the US, the old habit of being bossed around by other countrymen seems to persist – a shadow of the past. 

Indian Americans constitute the second-largest immigrant population in the US. However, it’s notable that Indians are not widely represented in leadership roles across many of the world’s top companies. 

According to the CompTIA report, there are over 5,57,000 software and IT service companies in the US, with approximately 13,400 tech startups launched in 2019 alone. However, only a small fraction of individuals, who were previously Indian citizens but are now US citizens, hold higher positions there. 

Despite India’s prominence in the tech industry and the presence of thousands of alumni from the IITs in the US since the 1960s, Indian passport holders occupying top positions in globally significant institutions remains rare. 

On the Other End

Indian IT giants have established a robust presence in the US. According to the HDFC Securities report, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) employs 50,000 people, Infosys 35,000, HCL Technologies 24,000, Wipro 20,000, and LTI Mindtree 6,500. 

Together, these companies account for approximately 2% of the US tech industry workforce. 

Harbir K Bhatia, the CEO of the Silicon Valley Central Chamber of Commerce, told the Press Trust of India, “India is one of the largest leaders of innovation in Silicon Valley. Data shows that 40% of Silicon Valley CEOs or founders are from South Asia or India.” 

Apple, a leader in the global tech industry, also reflects this trend, with nearly 35% of its workforce being of Indian origin. 

Adding to this narrative, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, in an interview with CNN-TV18, mentioned that Microsoft employs the second-largest number of engineers from India. 

When asked about the increasing number of CEO positions held by people of Indian origin, Nadella said, “In a country of 1 billion plus people, we should be seeing one-fifth of the CEO posts being held by Indians.”  

Time to Come Back to India

Whatever the US offers, maybe Indians there consider coming back and establishing their talent here. 

Recently, Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said that all the big tech companies including Google, Microsoft, Adobe and IBM in the world are run by Indians, but there is no Indian big-tech company in the world. 

“We feel proud of our Indians who are running global big tech companies, but there’s no big tech company that we can call Indian,” he said.

Reflecting on the same lines, Shekar Sivasubramanian, the CEO of Wadhwani AI, had earlier mentioned that he came back to India as this is the best place to experiment and innovate.

But given India’s current population, the idea of welcoming back our fellow countrymen raises concerns about further population growth. It’s hard to ignore the words of our favourite leader, Infosys co-founder Narayan Murthy, who pointed out the rising population is a major concern. 

“Since the Emergency period, we Indians have not paid enough attention to population control. This poses a risk of making our country unsustainable. In comparison, countries such as the US, Brazil and China have far higher per capita land availability,” he said.

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As India celebrates 78 years of independence, the “Made in India” movement is making its mark globally, with Indian startups challenging established industries across the globe. Just as Elon Musk has revolutionised electric vehicles in America, Bhavish Aggarwal is leading a similar charge with Ola in India. 

“Tesla is for the West, Ola is for the Rest,” resonated Aggarwal, at its annual flagship event, Sankalp 2024, where the company highlighted its achievements and outlined plans for the coming years.

Aggarwal emphasised three factors to drive the vision for the company — Youth, Dream, and Future. 

As Ola races to join the ranks of top global players, it’s hard to ignore the resemblance between Aggarwal and the world’s wealthiest man, Elon Musk. 

Common Traits

Aggarwal launched Olatrip.com in 2010, marking the beginning of his entrepreneurial journey.

Over the past 14 years, he’s gone on to establish Ola Consumer (Ola Cabs), Ola Electric, India’s first listed two-wheeler EV company, and six months ago set on building the country’s top AI and computing company– Ola Krutrim. 

(Source: Ola)

Aggarwal’s vision is rooted in his deep respect for India. “Never underestimate the Indian consumer – they are the smartest – they want to build and be the future”, he asserted.  

Further taking steps towards sustainability, Ola has also established India’s first lithium manufacturing factory. As Aggarwal put it, “The world cannot achieve sustainable goals without India.”

Turning to Musk, his entrepreneurial journey started in 1995, with Zip2, an American technology company. Since then, Musk has co-founded six companies, including electric car maker Tesla, rocket producer SpaceX, and tunnelling startup Boring Company.

Ownership and Valuation

In 2017, Ola Electric was born as a subsidiary of Ola, but between 2018-19, it ventured out as its own entity. Fast forward to 2024, and the company’s market cap stands at $7.81 billion. Aggarwal holds a significant 30.02% stake in the company. 

In comparison, Tesla with its market cap of $698.31 billion, is leading the electric vehicle space. Musk, who owns roughly 12% of Tesla, has pledged more than half his shares as collateral for personal loans amounting to $3.5 billion. 

Meanwhile, Ola’s footprint is very small compared to Tesla, it is steadily growing. Aggarwal’s entrepreneurial spirit shines through his AI startup, Krutrim, which recently achieved unicorn status, after securing $50 million in funding from investors including Matrix Partners India. 

This makes Krutrim the first Indian AI startup to hit a billion-dollar valuation, just a month following the launch of its LLM. The company, whose name itself means “artificial” in Sanskrit, has ambitious plans, like developing data centres and aiming to build servers and supercomputers for the AI ecosystem. 

On the other hand, Musk’s xAI is making waves in the AI industry with its mission to accelerate human scientific discovery. In May, xAI achieved an $18 billion valuation after raising $6 billion, with investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Saudi entrepreneur Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, and Fidelity Management & Research Company. 

What’s Next?

The similarities between Aggarwal and Musk go beyond business as both are no strangers to controversy and receive a good amount of backlash from the media. 

Musk once boldly declared at the New York Times annual DealBook Summit 2023, “I have no problem being hated.”

Similarly, Aggarwal has taken controversial stances, such as criticising gender pronouns, which he dismissed as “pronouns illness” from the West. 

Musk’s personal life also sparked outrage when he disowned his transgender daughter, claiming she was “killed” by what he calls the “woke mind virus.” 

So both men have chosen to stand by their beliefs, regardless of the wave of criticism that follows.

As we further trace the parallels between Aggarwal and Musk, two elements are notably absent. Ola has yet to dip its feet into the social media game – though perhaps a strategic partnership would have rescued Koo from shutting down, and allowing Aggarwal to claim that field as well.

He is anyway planning to build digital public infrastructure (DPI) for social media.

And while India doesn’t have SpaceX yet, may later establish ‘AntarikshOla’ someday? 

The post Bhavish Aggarwal is the Elon Musk of India appeared first on AIM.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, working from home became a norm. While it was the only choice at first, many of us now have adopted this working model perhaps longer than needed. 

Recently, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt reflected on this shift and said, “Google decided that work-life balance, going home early, and working from home, is more important than winning.” 

Schmidt highlighted the reality and remarked that startups like OpenAI are taking over Google because employees at these big companies come to the office just one day per week. 

Ironically, back in April in 2021, current Google CEO Sundar Pichai suggested that the ideal way to achieve work-life balance is to offer employees two days of work from home. 

But, it seems like the comfort zone is not for innovators.

Several scientists from Google DeepMind have left the company to establish new AI startups. One such venture is Paris-based startup H, which develops foundational AI models. Mistral AI, another AI company founded in 2023 by former Google DeepMind and Meta researchers, focuses on building open-source and commercial AI models. 

Unacherated Labs, a generative AI startup, was launched by three Google DeepMind researchers – David Ding, Charlie Nash, and Yaroslav Ganin. Additionally, Tokyo-based Sakana AI was founded by David Ha and Llion Jones, two former Google researchers.

And the list goes on. 

Is Work from Home a Moral Issue?

Earlier in 2023, Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, made headlines for opposing remote work culture. “I think that the whole notion of work from home is a bit like the fake Marie Antoinette quote, ‘Let them eat cake’,” Musk told CNBC.

“It’s not just a productivity thing, I think it’s morally wrong.”

Musk noted that if one plans to work from home, but expects others—like those who manufacture cars, prepare and deliver food, or fix the house—to go to work everyday, then it is not morally right.

Speaking of the productivity end, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in the previous year, noted that employees working from home create confusion while working from the office creates new products. 

At a session organised by fintech company, Stripe, he stated, “I think definitely one of the tech industry’s worst mistakes in a long time was that everybody (thought they) could go full remote forever, and startups didn’t need to be together.”

He further added that the experiment on that is over, and the technology is not yet good enough that people can be fully remote forever, particularly on startups.

In Office ≠ Working

But does coming to the office really prove an employee’s productivity? 

Last year, Amazon insisted its employees return to work 3 days a week. The company CEO Andy Jassy sent a warning message saying that people who don’t want to go back to the office – “It’s not going to work out for you.”

Following this announcement, a group of employees walked out in protest at the company’s Seattle headquarters. 

If you happen to stay in traffic front cities like Bengaluru, then the scene is four hours travelling for nine hours of work. So, being productive after long hours of travel is a question of concern. 

Tech Companies Introduce New Tricks

No matter what an employee thinks or wants, the remote work era has come to an end as tech companies are implementing tricks to lure employees back to the office. 

Wirpo, starting in May 2023 allowed employees to pick any three days a week to work from the office, offering campus activities to make the shift more appealing. 

HCLTech too embraced thrice weekly office routine. However, TCS mandated five-day office attendance and linked variable pay to in-person presence.

Sonata Software rolled out its return to office gradually, while Infosys required select employees to work ten days a month in the office. 

Well, can’t forget Infosys founder Narayana Murthy’s suggestion that Indian youths should work 70 hours a week. But he didn’t mention that employees should work from the office only! Maybe that’s a plus?

The post Remote Work Needs to be Banned appeared first on AIM.

This year has been particularly tough for IT employees with companies declining to hire freshers. Well, those working at the organisation are also not having the best time of their lives.

The entire IT sector witnessed a sharp decline in hike growth in 2023, dropping to 9.1% from 10.3% in 2022. Excluding products, the IT/ITeS sector saw the lowest average salary hike at just 8.4%.

In 2021, the average salary hike was 8.8%, which increased to 9.7% in 2022. Last year, the sector saw average increments between 8.5% and 9.1%. 

IT companies are offering single-digit salary increments to employees who lack AI-related skills. Further, there is an abundance of entry-level talent who are now equipping themselves with the latest tech and tools. Additionally, rising business costs, coupled with layoffs are making this trend continue this year too. 

IT Giants Follow Single Digit Hike Trend 

Earlier in May, a Dehradun-based engineer, Akshay Saini, took social media by storm with his critique of the corporate appraisal system in India.

Saini claimed that appraisals are a joke and further urged employees feeling underpaid to switch jobs.

He is not all wrong. 

Infosys, which offered an average salary hike of 14.6% in FY22, came down to 9% in FY24. For TCS, the average hike ranged between 7-9% in 2023-24, compared to 10.5% in 2021-22. 

Tech Mahindra and HCLTech offered average hikes between 5-7%. Wipro and LTIMindtree are yet to finalise their decisions on the same. 

Meanwhile, Accenture has opted not to provide salary hikes for its India-based employees this time.

Well, the story of startups is no different. 

Can GenAI Skill Help?

As per the Amazon Web Services (AWS) report, Indian employees with AI skills and knowledge may see salary hikes of more than 54% and those in IT and research and development enjoying the highest pay increases. 

Major Indian IT companies, despite substantial generative AI training initiatives, are offering lower starting salaries of around INR 3-4 lakh. 

AIM noted that AI engineers with generative AI skills saw a significant 50% increase in their salaries. At companies like Accenture, a generative developer can earn about INR 8.5 lakh per annum, compared to the INR 5-6 lakh that regular software engineers make. 

AIM reached out to an employee who works with generative AI at TCS. He said that the company’s pay scale won’t change just for GenAI resources, and the hike is also largely based on the company’s financial performance and business unit budget allocation.

“I believe we may get some good hikes in the range of 25-30% after switching to another company,” the employee added.

Hiring Freeze

Indian IT companies have all recently highlighted their commitment to integrate generative AI into their operations. Top firms like TCS, Infosys, and Wipro have been leveraging technology-enabled training for their employees.

As the companies are offering training programs, they seem to be following Charles Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory to retain employees. So, if an employee falls behind in the race, he is laid off. 

During the calendar year 2023, India’s IT sector laid off around 20,000 techies in a manner known as a “silent layoff,” according to All India IT & ITeS Employees’ Union (AIITEU) data. 

On the other end, companies have delayed the hiring process. Indian IT companies like Wipro, TCS, and Infosys have delayed the onboarding of 10,000 freshers, and refused to provide a joining date. 

As per the Nasscom data, the IT sector will create only 60,000 new jobs in FY24 compared to 2,70,000 jobs that were created by the sector in the previous fiscal year.

Ultimately, the choice is yours – either stay with the company, undergo training, and earn an average salary. Or get laid off, switch to another company, and wait for the same cycle down the road. 

The post Salary Hikes in IT Companies are Less than Cash Back appeared first on AIM.

Paul Buchheit, the creator of Gmail recently expressed concerns about the potential dangers of AI development in countries like China. Buchheit warned that if China leads the AI race, the world could face a permanent lockdown, with even our thoughts under surveillance and censorship. 

Responding to Buchheit’s remarks, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Former Union Minister of India, emphasised the importance of ensuring that democracies and their neighboring nations shape the future of technology. 

He stated, “Its extremely important – more than critical – that future of Tech is shaped by  democracies and their partner countries” 

There is no denying that despite pressing concerns about the ethical and privacy implications of AI, China remains a central player on the global stage. 

China’s Approach to AI Development

Source: Reddit

In October 2023, Chinese tech giant Baidu unveiled Ernie 4.0, the latest version of its generative AI model, claiming capabilities comparable to OpenAI’s GPT-4. 

This significant advancement highlights China’s rapid progress in AI, driven by substantial government support and strategic initiatives like the ‘New Generation Artificial Development Plan’. 

Launched in 2017, this plan aims to position China as a global AI leader by 2023, emphasising research funding, talent recruitment, and infrastructure development. These efforts underscore China’s commitment to dominating the AI sector, often pushing the boundaries of ethical and privacy considerations. 

China’s AI development is also fueled by leading companies including Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, and SenseTime, which attract top group talent and drive innovation. 

Meanwhile, China’s strides in hardware and robotics, with companies like Dreame Technology and Fourier Intelligence at the forefront, reflect a comprehensive approach to AI applications. 

Additionally, China’s advancements in facial recognition technology, widely deployed in public spaces, illustrate the country’s capability to implement AI solutions on a large scale. These often move rapidly as ethical concerns are not always given paramount importance. 

The post ‘It’s Extremely Important that Future of Tech is Shaped by Democracies and their Partner Countries,’ says Rajeev Chandrasekhar appeared first on AIM.

K. T. Rama Rao, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) Working President, recently highlighted a decline in IT employment in Telangana. He shared data showing that the number of jobs in the sector dropped from 1,27,594 in 2022-23 to just 40,285 in 2023-24. 

Well, the picture is not much different in the entire country. As per the Nasscom data, the IT sector will create only 60,000 new jobs in FY24 compared to 2,70,000 jobs that were created by the sector in the previous fiscal year.

And with Indian IT companies like Wipro, TCS, and Infosys delaying the onboarding of 10,000 freshers, and refusing to provide a joining date, it is evident that the sector continues to witness a trend of decline.

Is There Anyone Hiring?

In FY24, Infosys hired 11,900 freshers, marking a significant 76% decrease from the 50,000 hired in FY23. Similarly, TCS recruited 40,000 freshers in FY24, experiencing a slight reduction from the 44,000 hired the previous year. 

Wipro’s hiring also dropped by up to 50%, with only 10,000–12,000 freshers onboarded in FY24, compared to 20,000 in FY23. 

On the other hand, Cognizant and Capgemini were more aggressive in their FY23 hiring, bringing on 60,000 and 61,182 freshers, respectively, though data for FY24 isn’t provided for these two companies.

The trend of this decline in hiring is accompanied by an increase in layoffs. India’s IT sector laid off around 20,000 techies during the calendar year 2023, described as a “silent layoff,” according to data shared by All India IT & ITeS Employees’ Union (AIITEU).

Sources indicated that Infosys laid off nearly 200-500 employees in 2024, though company CEO Salil Parekh said that there were no plans for downsizing or job cuts. Further, the January 2024 report mentioned that Wipro is firing a mid-level workforce to enhance profit margins. 

Is GenAI the Reason?

Funnily enough, at the same time, many of the graduates do not want to join the Indian IT firms. The reluctance of recent graduates to pursue careers in Indian IT can be attributed to the prolonged stagnation of entry-level salaries, which have remained at INR 3.5-4 LPA for over a decade. High-paying product companies with compensation packages ranging from Rs 10-20 LPA have become more attractive.

Meanwhile, Indian IT is upskilling its existing employees with genAI, instead of hiring new ones. This is also one of the reasons why the workforce is declining and the benches are full. 

As of Feb 2024, the top 10 Indian IT services companies including TCS collectively had nearly 450 genAI projects and proofs of concept (PoCs) in development, reflecting a current deal pipeline valued between $150 million and $250 million, as per the data by market intelligence firm UnearthInsight. 

Sonata Software, a mid-tier IT company, reported that around 80% of its project pipeline is focused on genAI, according to chief information officer Samir Dhir. The company has a $50 million AI deal pipeline. 

Out of 6,532 employees only about 2,000 are currently trained in genAI, with the company aiming for 50% of its staff to be trained in this field by 2025. 

Therefore, freshers need to be already trained with genAI if they want to compete with the ones being trained at the IT firms. But, there is a significant gap between the curricula and industry expectations when it comes to employees being generative AI ready. 

Despite this, 70% of academic institutions believe their graduates are job-ready. In reality, only 16% of companies share the same view. 

In June, TCS struggled to hire for 80,000 job openings citing skill gap as the reason. The same is true for Wipro. The IT giant recently announced that it is now rolling out 30,000 offer letters for freshers from 2022 with a compensation of INR 3.5 LPA, and other CGPA requirements. 

The truth is that it is extremely difficult to find good, or even decent, software engineers with coding skills for such small compensation. At the same time, there is a supply of mediocre graduates who are not ready for taking up jobs. 

The post Why Top IT Companies in India are not Hiring? appeared first on AIM.

Managing finances isn’t easy for most of us. Data shows that an average consumer makes around 200 transactions every month. No wonder, nearly 7 in 10 of India’s affluent live with fragmented finances spread across multiple bank accounts, wallets, and UPI IDs. 

Further, according to an Amex Trendex survey, 69% of Indians prioritised financial health as part of their 2024 New Year resolution. On this front, growing savings (81%) and investing or expanding investments (75%) were the primary goals.

Building on this, CRED has recently introduced a feature called CRED Money. It leverages advanced data science to analyse spending patterns, provide personalised insights, and promote proactive personal financial management.

By making members more aware of their finances, CRED Money empowers them to take control and make informed financial decisions.

Recently, Avinash Shukla, a CRED member, tweeted about how the cash flow feature of CRED Money encouraged him to increase his investments beyond his spending.

So how does it work?

CRED Money uses the Account Aggregator (AA) framework, a key component of India’s digital public infrastructure, allowing consumers to securely and efficiently share their bank account information with authorised organisations.

With user consent, CRED’s AA partner, Finvu, consolidates data from various banks and transfers it directly to CRED Money.

Google Pay’s Similar Design 

Earlier in 2020, Google Pay had launched a similar update for Android and iOS, focusing on relationships with people and businesses. It offers insights into your spending and is built with multiple layers of security to keep your information private and safe. 

Instead of showing a long list of transactions, the app highlights the friends and businesses you transact with most frequently. 

If you connect your bank account or cards to Google Pay, the app provides periodic spending summaries and shows your trends and insights over time, giving a clearer view of your finances. 

Google Pay also organises your spending automatically, allowing you to search across your transactions in new ways. For example, you can search for “food”, “last month”, or “Mexican restaurants”, and Google Pay will instantly find the relevant transactions.

Is CRED a Super App?

It is to be noted that CRED, which is the credit card bill payment platform, eventually integrated UPI payment, competing against the likes of Paytm and PhonePe.  

Then there’s CRED Money, which also assists users by sending reminders and updates and allowing them to make payments through CRED UPI. 

Last year, the company launched CRED Garage, a one-stop shop to streamline vehicle management and enter motor insurance distribution, recharging FASTags, and accessing roadside assistance, and more. 

Speaking on the emergence of supper apps, CRED CEO Kunal Shah recently said, “Most people launch a very complex product to start with. A Swiss knife before a decent knife that works.”

He said that this also applies to super apps that numerous large conglomerates launch, attempting to offer 20 features all at once from day one, hinting at how CRED has been focusing on building one feature at a time and building value-adds sensibly. 

Responding to Justin.tv former CEO Emmett Shear’s take on Gall’s Law, Shah stated that large conglomerates often launch super apps that aim to offer a wide range of services right from the beginning. 

Emphasising the importance of simplicity and focus when starting a new venture or developing a product, he said these apps try to do many things at once, which can lead to complications and inefficiencies.

The post CRED Money – Personal Finance Manager with Advanced Data Science appeared first on AIM.

There is no shying away from the fact that generative AI has become a source of hope for busy professionals. A recent survey indicates that 61% of organisations use AI for social media primarily to reduce staff workload.

Further, 64% of chief marketing officers (CMOs) remain optimistic about AI’s potential though there has been a decline in average marketing budgets from 9.1% in 2023 to 7.7% of overall company revenue this year.

Useful, maybe. But is it also profitable?

Neil Patel, the co-founder at Neil Patel Digital, emphasised that while AI can simplify and automate marketing tasks, it doesn’t necessarily make the overall process easier.

He noted that, similar to how the cloud revolutionised business operations, AI lowers the barriers to entry for startups, making it easier and cheaper for new companies to develop products and services. 

However, this reduction in barriers also leads to increased competition. More startups and businesses entering the market means that companies must invest more in marketing and sales to stand out and attract customers.

David Spitz, the founder of BenchSights, provided data showing a dramatic rise in marketing and sales expenses for SaaS companies over the past eight quarters. The figures (150%, 167%, 179%, etc.) demonstrate the growing cost of generating revenue, with companies spending $2.64 for every $1 of revenue.

Additionally, these companies take an average of 2.64 years to recoup their marketing and sales expenditures, which does not even account for profitability. This underscores the increasing significance and cost of marketing efforts.

Patel also highlighted a survey of 113 later-stage startups, which revealed that they spend an average of 27.59% of their raised funds on marketing, illustrating the substantial investment required in this area.

There is More Bad News

Data suggests that the entire process from writing to publication can be completed in as little as 16 minutes with AI, compared to an average of 69 minutes for humans. Despite this efficiency, the question of trust remains significant.

According to the Hootsuite Social Media Consumer 2024 Survey, 62% of consumers are less likely to engage with or trust content if they know it is AI-generated content. It further reflects on the traffic or engagement of the content too. 

Patel previously noted, “If everyone uses AI to create content, and if AI uses data already available to develop these projects, we won’t have anything new and authentic anymore.”

It appears that only marketing professionals are confident in AI, while consumers remain sceptical.

LinkedIn’s AI Game for Marketing

Recently, Yurii Rebryk, the CEO of Fluently, shared that one of his posts went viral, reaching 2,100,000 views and generating 14,305 visits to the company’s website.

“People in the comments ask me why I post on LinkedIn. Doesn’t this take focus away from my business? The answer is NO — LinkedIn is one of the best marketing channels where you can organically attract thousands of users to your B2B or B2C product,” Rebryk explained. 

This year, LinkedIn introduced many AI features ranging from assisting in the creation of a job description feed to writing a post. 

This feature has faced criticism from users as they ask, why just share thoughts and rewrite with AI, offer a feature that can add an audio mode and save us the trouble of typing. While others believe it enhances the writing and boosts the author’s confidence.

Hope your next marketing strategy doesn’t solely rely on AI and if not, then good luck!

The post Using GenAI in Marketing is Such a Waste of Time & Money appeared first on AIM.

Antler, a VC firm, recently announced a $10 million investment in early-stage Indian AI startups. Rajiv Srivatsa, partner at Antler, shared the news on X, emphasising: “NOW is the best time to build a startup in India!”

Similarly, last month Google introduced several initiatives to enhance AI development in India, including a partnership with the MeitY Startup Hub to train 10,000 startups. 

At the Google I/O Connect Bengaluru 2024 event, the tech giant introduced the 2024 Class of the Google for Startups Accelerator: AI First program in India. This cohort includes 20 exceptional AI-first startups from diverse sectors such as gaming and manufacturing, chosen from over 1,030 applications nationwide.

Earlier in March, there were reports that suggested India will partner with chip-making giant NVIDIA to procure up to 10,000 of its GPUs and NPUs and offer them at subsidised rates to local startups, researchers, academic institutions, and other users in a bid to boost the AI infrastructure in India.

Further, even the JioGenNext team invests substantial time in collaborating with AI startups to offer comprehensive support and strategic insights tailored to their needs and challenges. The latest cohort, MAP’24, also featured 10 generative AI startups across sectors like healthcare, banking, legal services, and agriculture.

The Indian government is also playing a pivotal role in fostering AI growth. 

The US-India AI Initiative by IUSSTF, aims to foster AI growth through idea exchange and collaboration in crucial sectors like energy, health, and agriculture. 

Additionally, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs announced MCA 3.0 to streamline regulatory filing using AI, and the Responsible AI for Youth program by MeitY aims to impart AI skills to government school students, enhancing their employability and practical knowledge.

Not just the central, state governments are taking matters into their own hands. For example, the Telangana government launched the INAI (Intel AI) research centre in collaboration with IIT Hyderabad and the Public Health Foundation of India. This centre focuses on using AI to tackle healthcare and smart mobility challenges, particularly in rural and difficult terrains. 

Additionally, the state government has become the first in India to develop AI models in a regional language. In collaboration with Swecha, it is creating a Telugu language model, involving 100,000 students in a datathon to gather high-quality data.

AI Funding Galore 

In the last six months alone, 43 Indian AI startups received $864 million in funding, according to data from AIM Research. 

Among these startups, Ema, an enterprise AI startup, raised $36 million in Series A funding. 

Bengaluru-based Simplismart, founded by Amritanshu Jain and Devansh Ghatak, raised $7 million in a funding round led by Accel, with participation from existing investors, including Anicut Capital, First Cheque, Sunn91, and Shastra VC. 

Another Bengaluru-based AI startup, Unscript, has raised over $1.25 million to date, which has been pivotal in developing its platform and expanding its market reach. 

Additionally, Bloq Quantum, an AI quantum software startup, secured INR 1.3 crore in a pre-seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures. Meanwhile, Ascendion, a provider of digital engineering services, reported a remarkable 382% increase in generative AI revenue in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in the previous year. 

Not to forget, an old but important update, in a significant milestone for the Indian AI sector, Ola-backed Krutrim became India’s first AI startup to achieve unicorn status with a $50 million funding boost.

Acquisitions, Partnerships, and More

In terms of AI acquisitions, Protect AI acquired Bengaluru-based SydeLabs for $25 million to enhance LLM security. 

C5i acquired Bengaluru-based Analytic Edge for $20 million, marking its second Indian acquisition after Incivus, to enhance AI-driven marketing and sales solutions, as the firm aims for a INR 1000 crore turnover and a future listing in India.

Coming down to AI partnerships, CoRover.ai recently partnered with AI auditing firm EthosAI.one to benchmark BharatGPT against industry leaders like GPT-4, Llama 2, and Gemini, ensuring reliability, fairness, and accuracy through continuous auditing and enhancements. 

Karya partnered with Microsoft Research to build one of the largest multilingual evaluations of Indian LLMs, involving over 90,000 human assessments of 30 models in 10 languages to address linguistic diversity and cultural nuances, alongside enhancing model performance and reliability.

The AI startup scene in India is buzzing with activity, and the momentum shows no signs of slowing down.

Mukund Jha, the co-founder and former CTO of Dunzo, is in discussions to secure INR 80 crore (approximately $6-10 million) from Together Fund for his new generative AI startup focused on automating quality assurance processes in businesses, integrating AI and SaaS technologies.

Startups appear to be acting on Peak XV Partners MD Rajan Anandan’s words: “Our firm has over INR 16,000 Cr of dry powder. We just want more people starting up in AI.”

As per Traxcn data, in 2022, AI startups in India raised $599 million. However, funding dropped sharply to $168.4 million in 2023, representing a decline of almost 71%. In 2024, nearly $96 million has been raised so far, marking a 61% increase over the same period in 2023 but still an 82% decline compared to the first half of 2022. 

Interestingly, India ranks third among the top five countries by business funding, surpassing both the United Kingdom and Germany. 

Government Regulatory Support

Coming down to policies and guidelines, NITI Aayog introduced the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence in 2018, outlining guidelines for AI research and development across various sectors, including healthcare, agriculture, education, “smart” cities, infrastructure, and smart mobility. 

Later in 2021, NITI Aayog published Part 1 – Principles for Responsible AI and Part 2 – Operationalizing Principles for Responsible AI. 

Recently, the government enacted the Digital Personal Data Protection Act in 2023, which can be utilised to address privacy concerns related to AI platforms.

In its 2023 AI report, MeitY has outlined seven pillars for strategic AI development, including Centers of Excellence, Dataset Platform, and future skills initiatives.

Further, the report also has recommendations for how India can leverage its demographic dividend and play to its strengths as an IT superpower to further the penetration of AI skills in the country, strengthening the AI compute infrastructure in India to support AI innovation through public-private partnerships (PPPs). 

To put it simply in the words of Paul Graham, the American computer scientist – “If you start a startup now to do something that barely works with AI, the next models will make it really work.”

Seems like there’s no stopping for India in AI.  The time is NOW. 

The post Now is the Best Time to Build AI Startups in India appeared first on AIM.

“We regret to inform you that as of today, your position has been eliminated” — emails bearing this tone and tenor are the most dreaded and can often turn employees’ lives topsy-turvy, especially for those used to a certain lifestyle that the tech sector promises. 

According to Layoffs.Fyi, as of July 2024, 360 tech companies laid off over 104,400 employees this year alone. And now, Intel plans to cut around 15,000 jobs, which amounts to 15% of its workforce, in a strategic move to save $10 billion by 2025. 

Hate us not, but layoffs can be good news parading as bad – a blessing in disguise.

Recently, filmmaker and executive producer Monica Medellin said that she is grateful for her layoff. If it hadn’t happened, she would have never carved her own career path. 

She is not alone. A Reddit user wrote that he was laid off from McKinsey last year and received a 4.5-month severance package. He took a two-month trip to Europe and then secured a contract role that was converted to a full-time position within a few months.

Besides, he also started a side hustle that generated $33k in income last year. Overall, he earned the highest income he’d ever made and attributed this success to the layoff. He mentioned that there is definitely hope! One should update their LinkedIn profile.

Another story is that of a Meta employee who worked for seven months before being laid off just as he was about to close on a house. He subsequently joined New Relic as a lead data engineer for a similar salary but received a double paycheck for one month and a severance package, which significantly improved his finances. 

With the signing bonus, he earned a substantial amount of money in less than a year of work. Well, he’s now grateful to Meta!

And the stories go on.  

Source: LinkedIn

Better than Burnout

Burnout has always pushed employees to silently quit their jobs. A recent Indeed report reveals that employee burnout is increasing, with 52% of workers feeling its effects. Stress, fatigue, and mental health challenges are impacting employees of all ages and job types in the corporate environment.

This encourages many to build a startup. 

Kishore Indukuri left his job at Intel in the US to return to India and start Sid’s Farm, a dairy delivering unadulterated milk to Hyderabad residents. Now, his dairy brand earns Rs 44 crore revenue. 

A layoff could also nudge out the successful influencer in you waiting for that one push. 

According to Influencer Market Hub, YouTubers make an average of $0.018 per ad view. However, the amount also depends on factors such as the number of followers, views, clicks on ads, ad quality, ad blockers, and video length.

Here’s an interesting story: Vanessa Chen, a 23-year-old content creator in Boston, shared that she was a computer science undergraduate with plans to become a software engineer. But she became a full-time content creator with more than 4 million followers across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok and earns a mid-six-figure income.

So, creating a YouTube channel can be a great part-time job, especially if you fear job security at your workplace. 

Meanwhile, to dilute the effects of burnout, some companies like Zoho are leveraging cloud computing, unlocking the potential of rural talent, and creating employment opportunities in the process.

Zoho’s Rural Revival is an initiative where miniature farming sites are built to grow fresh produce and provide a way for everyone to bring their families together, connect, and help relieve stress.

Further, they have set up mini-offices in the hinterlands, enabling people to stay close to the ones they love, invest in a home of their own, cut down on travel costs, and stay out of debt. 

“In five years, 50 percent of our employees will work from smaller, rural centres. We want to keep people rooted in their towns and villages and provide world-class jobs in these places,” said Sridhar Vembu, CEO and co-founder Zoho. 

When near home and family, burnout will not be in the picture. 

Time to Rewrite Your Resume

As most companies continue to believe that reducing staff will provide the best and easiest solution to financial problems, it’s evident that your resume needs an overhaul. 

The stories of Vizzy CEO’s unconventional hiring practices, the self-taught journeys of individuals like Izam Mohammed, and the insights shared by industry leaders all reflect a fundamental truth that expertise and skill in technology are no longer solely defined by degrees.

Well, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, thinks, “University degrees are IMO status and not substance at this point.”  

The post Layoff is a Gift appeared first on AIM.

If you are an employee at an Indian IT company, you would receive an email from your manager asking to update your resume mentioning generative AI skills. It is now a mandatory drill to undergo such training, one can even call it a mania.

Because back in 2017, Mark Cuban, the famous American businessman, said “Artificial Intelligence, deep learning, machine learning — whatever you’re doing if you don’t understand it — learn it. Because otherwise you’re going to be a dinosaur within 3 years.”

This hasn’t changed. Almost an entire generation is studying for jobs that won’t exist. And when it comes to the Indian IT industry, if you are educated, you won’t get a job that pays you well enough. But if you are not that upskilled and do not demand higher salaries, you might be in a better position to land a job.

Indian Employees Look to Reskill

A Reddit user wrote, “I am 25 with a bachelor in CS and masters in AI. With zero YOE [Years of experience], I found it tough to land a job after college and had to settle with a generic SDE [Software Development Engineer] role at a small company.” Many fresh graduates shared similar concerns on forums like Reddit.  

Source: Reddit

This sentiment reflects a broader issue faced by many new entrants into the tech industry. Aspiring software engineers/developers consider several strategies to stand out and secure desirable positions.

Indian IT companies have all recently highlighted their commitment to integrate generative AI into their operations. Top firms like TCS, Infosys, and Wipro have been leveraging technology-enabled training for their employees.

Wipro’s foundational training for over 2,25,000 employees, coupled with advanced AI training for an additional 30,000, highlights their approach to AI education within their workforce.

Similarly, Accenture has been expanding its data and AI workforce, reaching approximately 55,000 skilled practitioners. With a goal to double this number to 80,000 by the end of FY2026.

Further, HCL plans to train and upskill around 20,000 employees in generative AI every quarter. It aims to reach 100,000 employees by the end of FY25, reflecting its strategic focus on AI proficiency.

TCS is taking a similar approach, training over 150,000 employees in collaboration with tech giants. TCS aims to build the largest AI-ready workforce in the world through organic reskilling efforts. 

Milind Lakkad, TCS’ executive vice president and global head of human resources, noted that the company now has over 100,000 GenAI-ready employees and is investing in further deepening their expertise. 

Infosys has trained around 250,000 employees in GenAI capabilities, focusing on enhancing their service offerings through this technology.

While Capgemini has scaled its capabilities significantly by training over 120,000 employees on generative AI tools. 

What’s Next?

Accenture has announced over $900 million in new bookings for generative AI, reaching a total of $2 billion fiscal year-to-date during its Q3 FY24 earnings report.

“We have achieved two significant milestones this quarter — with $2 billion in generative AI sales year-to-date and $500 million in revenue year-to-date — demonstrating our early lead in this critical technology,” the company said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Indian IT majors like TCS have doubled up on their AI game. The IT giant announced that it is doubling its AI pipeline to $1.5 billion this quarter, from the $900 million pipeline reported in the previous one.

TCS is now also working on around 270 AI projects worldwide. Moreover, in Q1 FY25, it applied for 154 patents and was granted 277, as revealed by TCS chief K Krithivasan.

Coming to Wipro, it is driving innovation and enhancing productivity through investments in the Lab 45 AI platform and Wipro Enterprise GenAI Studio, incorporating various GenAI tools into the software development lifecycle.

Further, HCL’s AI-led engagements include implementing a GenAI-based solution for a global technology major, automating gaming review analysis, which resulted in significant workload reduction and a 119% increase in game reviews. 

Additionally, they are transforming the client’s content lifecycle management with GenAI features. 

While Capgemini is currently engaged in over 350 new projects, with more than 2,000 deals in the pipeline. The company has also scaled its capabilities by training over 120,000 employees on generative AI tools and continues to invest in related tools, assets, and platforms.

Seems like Indian IT giants have taken up the herculean task of upskilling the Indian techies with generative AI and also not keeping them unemployed.

The post Young Indians Are More Likely to Be Jobless if They’re Educated  appeared first on AIM.

CRED CEO Kunal Shah mentioned, “Most people launch a very complex product to start with. A Swiss knife before a decent knife that works.”

He said that this also applies to super apps that numerous large conglomerates launch, attempting to offer 20 features all at once from day one, hinting at how CRED has been focusing on building one feature at a time and building value-adds sensibly. 

Responding to Emmett Shear, Former CEO of Justin.tv’s take on Gall’s law, Shah stated that large conglomerates often launch super apps that aim to offer a wide range of services right from the beginning. 

Emphasising the importance of simplicity and focus when starting a new venture or developing a product, he said these apps try to do many things at once, which can lead to complications and inefficiencies.

It is to be noted that CRED, which is the credit card bill payment platform, eventually integrated the UPI payment club competing against the likes of Paytm and PhonePe.  

Recently, it has launched CRED Money, a new feature aimed to simplify financial decision-making. This tool provides a unified view of balances and transactions across various bank accounts.

This feature assists by sending reminders and updates and allowing users to make payments through CRED UPI. 

Last year, it launched CRED Garage, a one-stop shop to streamline vehicle management and enter motor insurance distribution, recharging FASTags, and accessing roadside assistance, and more. 

Super Apps on the Rise

In 2022, the global super apps market was valued at a staggering $61.30 billion, with a growth trajectory of 27.8% expected from 2023 to 2030. Gartner’s survey reveals that the top 15 super apps have been downloaded over 4.6 billion times worldwide, boasting 2.68 billion monthly active users.

By 2050, it is anticipated that more than half of the global population will be using super apps. Well, the key to their widespread adoption lies in the mobile-first market, where smartphones are the primary connected devices. 

Another major contributor is their integration of financial and payment services. Paytm in India, Grab in Singapore, Goto in Indonesia, and Zalo in Vietnam are a few examples, each pivoting their user experience around robust financial and banking services.

Earlier ​​Deepinder Goyal, the CEO of Zomato had said that super apps don’t work in India. He would rather have Zomato and Blinkit grow as separate brands.

The post CRED’s Chief Kunal Shah Cites Gall’s Law to Build Super Apps appeared first on AIM.

When asked about our favourite apps, most of us would name Zomato, Swiggy, or Zepto. And it’s pretty obvious why. Well, craving food when stressing over the looming possibility of a 14-hour workday is completely justified. 

But if you think Zomato and Swiggy are just about delivering food or booking tables at fancy restaurants, it’s time to rethink.

A YouTuber from the channel Full Disclosure recently interviewed food delivery riders and revealed that some of these riders earn between INR 40,000 and INR 50,000 per month, which is more than the average income of many IT professionals.

One rider even mentioned that he managed to save INR 2 lakh in just six months.

In another interesting scenario, Venkatesh Gupta, a techie, shared on X a strange encounter. He met a senior Microsoft engineer in Bengaluru driving an auto rickshaw over the weekends to fend off loneliness.

Every Social Media Platform is an eCommerce Store

Most social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp, are striving to become e-commerce platforms. 

Every platform you visit is working hard to enable you to buy things without leaving their site. TikTok, for example, changed its ‘storefront’ to ‘shop’ so you can make purchases directly on the app. No more jumping to other websites.

This isn’t just TikTok. YouTube allows creators to sell products in their videos. Pinterest has ‘buyable pins’ so you can shop without leaving the site. Facebook has stores, even on Messenger. Google is also in the game with Google Business.

WhatsApp was launched as a one-to-one chat app service in February 2009 and now offers Business Accounts with payment options. 

WhatsApp for e-commerce allows customers to complete the entire transaction on one app without needing to shift platforms. This can be done by integrating the product catalogue with WhatsApp Business. 

Customers can then browse products, view prices, and make purchases directly within the WhatsApp interface. 

Unexpected Chat Apps

In recent years, many applications initially designed for specific purposes have added messaging capabilities. When you break up with your boyfriend and think you’ve blocked him everywhere, including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook, he can still text you on GPay! 

Instagram, originally a photo-sharing app, now offers direct messaging (DM) to allow users to chat, share media, and even engage in group conversations. It also functions as an app that can make you doubt yourself and give you an inferiority complex (maybe). 

Coming back to Google Pay, which was initially just a payments app, now includes messaging features to facilitate communication around transactions, share payment details, and more.

There’s also Spotify, which allows users to share songs and playlists through integrated messaging services.

Super Apps on the Rise

In 2022, the global super apps market was valued at a staggering $61.30 billion, with a growth trajectory of 27.8% expected from 2023 to 2030. Gartner’s survey reveals that the top 15 super apps have been downloaded over 4.6 billion times worldwide, boasting 2.68 billion monthly active users.

By 2050, it is anticipated that more than half of the global population will be using super apps. Well, the key to their widespread adoption lies in the mobile-first market, where smartphones are the primary connected devices. 

Another major contributor is their integration of financial and payment services. Paytm in India, Grab in Singapore, Goto in Indonesia, and Zalo in Vietnam are a few examples, each pivoting their user experience around robust financial and banking services.

Even apps like Cred, which is the credit card bill payment platform, are joining the UPI payment club competing against Paytm and PhonePe.  

Earlier ​​Deepinder Goyal, the CEO of Zomato had said that super apps don’t work in India. He would rather have Zomato and Blinkit grow as separate brands.

Maybe it’s time to rethink. 

The post Accidental Super Apps appeared first on AIM.

Since last year, generative AI has swiftly evolved from being a buzzword to scripting success stories for businesses. According to a recent survey, implementing generative AI at scale can increase productivity by 30% to 50%, with 95% of global customer service leaders expecting AI bots to handle customer interactions within the next three years.

In the first episode of the five-part webinar series, expert leaders will touch upon AI’s potential to achieve operational excellence and improve customer experience. It will be led by industry leaders Kiran Kuppili, Executive Director & Head of Institutional Banking Group and Payments, DBS Tech India, and Bala Natarajan, VP of generative AI and analytics at Capgemini, India.

With over 28 years of experience in data analytics, AI/ML, and business process management, Natarajan leads a team of 3,500 professionals. He advises global enterprises on leveraging AI for transformation and developing data monetisation models.

Natarajan will be joined by Kiran Kuppili, who has over 20 years of experience in banking IT across the US, European, and Asian markets. He has driven innovation and efficiency as the lead for a Conversational AI platform and continues to leverage emerging technologies to propel the digital transformation of DBS Bank. 

This webinar will mark the beginning of our five-part webinar series with subject matter experts from various industries ready to inspire professionals and cultivate curiosity in the field of data science and AI.

REGISTER NOW: LINK

What Will You Learn? 

Personalised Customer Engagement: Generative AI can be responsibly trained to leverage customer data to create responses tailored to individual preferences and needs, making them more personalised. 

Enhanced Efficiency: By automating interactions and using data-driven insights, businesses can gain higher levels of efficiency in their customer service operations.

Who Should Attend? 

Whether you’re looking to enhance your understanding of AI’s role in operational excellence, or seeking to upskill in ML, cloud, and data analytics, this series offers a wealth of knowledge from top experts in the field for you to gain an insightful learning experience. 

Join us for these engaging sessions to stay ahead of the curve in AI innovation and discover how the technology can drive business success and improve customer experiences. Register now to secure your spot and be part of the conversation that is shaping the future of AI in business.

REGISTER NOW: LINK

About DBS Tech India

DBS Tech India, formerly known as DBS Asia Hub 2 Pvt. Ltd, was established in 2016 as the bank’s first offshore technology development center in Hyderabad, India. As an integral part of DBS’ long-term strategy operating as a development center of excellence and innovation, we strive to transform the future of banking through experimentation and growth as we stay committed in building a better tomorrow for our customers, and the world.

In line with DBS Bank’s vision of being a #differentkindofbank, we are more than just a technology hub, always believing that technology is business and business is technology. With over 4000 techies collaborating as one team, we are stepping upwards to a new future and fuelling the next wave of digital transformation as a World-Class Engineering Organisation to deliver superior cutting-edge technologies and solutions.

The post DECODE: Operational Excellence—Improving Customer Experience with GenAI appeared first on AIM.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has achieved a groundbreaking advancement in breast cancer detection. Researchers at the Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning and MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed an AI model capable of identifying breast cancer up to five years before clinical diagnosis.

This deep learning model, named Mirai, is based on mammography and aims to detect precancerous changes in high-risk women. 

It predicts a patient’s risk across various future time points and can incorporate clinical risk factors like age and family history when available. Additionally, Mirai is designed to maintain consistent predictions despite minor clinical variances, such as different mammography machines.

Technology Explained

The AI model analysed chromatin images from 560 tissue samples across 122 patients, identifying eight distinct cell states throughout various stages of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). 

By considering both cellular composition and spatial arrangement, the model revealed that tissue organisation is crucial in predicting disease progression.

Utilising a convolutional variational autoencoder, the AI learns from simple chromatin staining images, a more cost-effective and accessible method compared to complex sequencing techniques. Remarkably, the model detected cell states associated with invasive cancer even in tissue that appeared normal to the human eye. 

Anand Mahindra lauds ‘Mirai’

Business tycoon Anand Mahindra highlighted this medical advancement and shared a post on X appreciating the AI’s ability to detect breast cancer five years in advance. 

With current five-year survival rates for breast cancer at approximately 90% when detected early, this five-year head start on diagnosis and treatment could significantly improve patient outcomes.

Breast Cancer Detection By Google’s AI

Google’s AI has started detecting breast cancer in screenings where identifiable information has been removed. Google’s AI spotted cancer with greater accuracy and fewer false negatives and false positives than experts.

In collaboration with Deepmind, Cancer Research UK Imperial Centre, Northwestern University and Royal Surrey County Hospital have tested the AI to help radiologists around the world to assist them in detecting breast cancer more accurately.

The post MIT Researchers Develop AI Model for Early Breast Cancer Detection appeared first on AIM.

It’s established – Bengaluru loves to rave about its weather and rant about its infamous and chaotic traffic. But the nasty traffic issue hit closer home when one of our senior tech journalists at AIM recently injured her neck from enduring long and arduous hours of travel in the city’s auto rickshaws. 

While searching for a fix to this problem, she stumbled upon a post by a local entrepreneur Paras Chopra, who proposed a solution inspired by a successful scheme in Beijing. 

Chopra suggested that such a service could work in Bengaluru’s traffic nightmare.

Let’s understand both cities here. 

Beijing, being one of the most populated cities in the world with a population of over 21 million people, has introduced a unique solution, “jam busting”, where you pay around $60 for someone to come and rescue you from a traffic jam.

In Beijing, this service involves hiring individuals, often on motorcycles, to navigate through congested areas and help drivers reach their destinations quickly.

Coming to Bengaluru’s traffic statistics, as of April 1, 2023, the city had 1.09 crore registered vehicles – 73 lakh of them being two-wheelers. The popularity of bikes, scooters, and mopeds in the city can be attributed to the easy loan availability, ease of parking, and fuel efficiency.

So, when we already have a problem of plenty, introducing more bikes as a solution to traffic woes seems unrealistic. 

Post the COVID-19 pandemic, the city opted for an alternative, and a dedicated 17 km cycle lane was laid along the Outer Ring Road (ORR) by the civic authorities in 2020. 

This lane catered to a considerable number of employees commuting to their offices within the city’s IT corridor. However, the construction of a Namma Metro line along the same stretch has resulted in the disappearance of the cycle lane.

Netizens raised concerns over the Beijing traffic model adoption, like the cost of such a service and the trustworthiness of ensuring the vehicle reaches back to its owner safely.

Burger a Day Keeps the Traffic Away

In 2019, Burger King launched a marketing campaign called ‘Traffic Jam Whopper’ in Mexico City. 

The city is also known for its severe traffic congestion, with commuters often spending hours stuck in traffic jams. The initiative turned traffic congestion into a business opportunity by delivering food to customers stuck in traffic. 

Interestingly, there was a significant increase in sales during peak traffic hours, with daily delivery orders in Mexico City rising by 63% during the trial period.

Could such inventive solutions be adopted for Bengaluru? While intriguing, the practical challenges of implementing such services in Karnataka’s capital remain significant.

Google to Solve Bengaluru Traffic Problem

Google’s Project Green Light is helping the city, notorious for its jams and bottlenecks, improve traffic flow at intersections, and reduce stop-and-go emissions. 

With AI and insights from Google Maps driving trends, Green Light demonstrates a deep understanding of global road networks. This enables it to model traffic patterns and build intelligent recommendations for city traffic engineers to optimise traffic flow. 

“Project Green Light is now live in 13 global cities, like Rio, Hamburg, Bengaluru, and my hometown – Seattle,” said Juliet Rothenberg, the product team lead of Climate AI at Google, in a recent interview with CBS News, demonstrating its workings. 

“Every red light is an opportunity for us,” she added. 

Further, she said that early numbers indicate a potential for up to 30% reduction in stops and up to 10% cut in emissions at intersections. “At the 70 intersections where Green Light is already live, this can save fuel and lower emissions for up to 30 million car rides monthly,” she said.

Currently, Project Green Light operates at 70 intersections in 12 cities, including Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Kolkata. 

Recently, Google collaborated with the Bengaluru Traffic Police to reduce congestion. Features like Street View were introduced to offer real-time updates and alternative routes for faster commutes. Last year, the tech giant partnered with BMTC to optimise routes and schedules available to commuters using mobile phones. 

Google’s Project Green Light certainly looks promising for curbing traffic congestion, not only in Bengaluru but also in other cities. 

[FYI: This senior tech journalist happens to share a striking resemblance to the author of this piece :’)]

The post Bengaluru Traffic Drives Techies Crazy, Sparks Wild Startup Ideas appeared first on AIM.

This week, the newly-formed central government tabled the Union Budget for the year 2024-25. Everything from agriculture to space was spoken of, however, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman left the ‘AI-word’ unsaid in her budget speech!

According to IndiaAIMission, the Union government has allocated Rs 551.75 crore to the AI Mission, emphasising its commitment to advancing AI research and applications. 

Earlier in March 2024, the Cabinet had approved Rs 10,354 crore for the AI Mission, a provision of 10,000 graphics processing units for use by start-ups and universities.

IndiaAIMission mentioned that this financial boost for the next five years will drive key initiatives, including the IndiaAI Compute Capacity, IndiaAI Innovation Centre (IAIC), IndiaAI Datasets Platform, IndiaAI Application Development Initiative, IndiaAI FutureSkills, IndiaAI Startup Financing, and Safe & Trusted AI. 

Is this Enough?

Considering the global AI race, the government must step up its game. 

In March 2024, US President Joe Biden’s budget allocated $202 billion for federal research and development (R&D), recognising the potential benefits of AI while addressing its risks. 

This budget includes a significant investment of $729 million for AI R&D at the National Science Foundation (NSF), marking a 10% increase from the 2023 budget. From this fun, $30 million is designated for the second year of the National AI Research Resource Pilot.

Further, it includes $310 million for DARPA’s AI Forward initiative to research and develop trustworthy technology that operates reliably, interacts appropriately with people, and meets the most pressing national security and societal needs in an ethical manner.

Further, the UK has announced £100 million in AI funding for the Alan Turing Institute over the next five years, as part of its Spring Budget 2024.

India’s AI Research Game

At the IGIC 2024 event in Bengaluru, a research scholar from Singapore highlighted a curious trend: grants were being awarded to studies that merely mentioned AI. Interestingly, India’s AI research scene has seen a dramatic rise lately. 

In 2023, India published 17,000 AI papers, a significant increase from fewer than 4,000 just a decade ago. This surge pushed India past the UK, which previously held the fourth position. 

However, the question is how relevant are these papers? 

Several researchers aimed to measure the difference in research quality. In 2020, Klinger et al studied the development and variety of topics in AI research and looked at how much private companies influence this research. They analysed around 90,000 AI-related papers from arXiv.org.

Later in 2021, Hagendorff and Meding analysed 10,000 machine learning papers from three major conferences (CVPR, NeurIPS, and ICML) published between 2015 and 2019. They categorised the papers by searching for academic and industry-related words in the full text. 

Their findings showed that the number of papers involving both academia and industry is increasing. They measured the impact of papers by their median number of citations and found that industry-affiliated papers received more citations than academic ones. 

However, this difference decreases over time as newer papers accumulate citations more slowly. 

They also found that academic papers were about two years behind industry papers in mentioning trending topics like “adversarial” and “deep learning”. An analysis of social impact terms showed no significant difference between academic and industry papers.

What’s Next?

India serves as a great playing field to experiment with any new innovation.

For AI to succeed on a large scale, access to diverse data, which is abundantly available in India, is required. The diversity within the population acts as a natural protection against bias, allowing for more accurate and representative AI models.

“If AI works in India, it can work anywhere. This is because the diversity within the population acts as a natural protection against bias, allowing for more accurate and representative AI models,” said Shekhar Sivasubramanian, the CEO of Wadhwani AI.

But sitting on diversity advantage with no money will take the country nowhere.

The post AI Fell Silent Amid the Union Budget 2024 Buzz appeared first on AIM.

The global consulting and technology services firm Capgemini shared that the company’s leadership in AI services is well recognised by industry analysts. And generative AI continues to drive client discussions, leading to larger-scale deployment projects.

Capgemini is currently engaged in over 350 new projects, with more than 2,000 deals in the pipeline. The company has also scaled its capabilities by training over 120,000 employees on generative AI tools and continues to invest in related tools, assets, and platforms.

Capgemini generated revenues of €11,138 million in H1 2024, reflecting a year-on-year decrease of 2.5% on a reported basis and 2.6% at constant exchange rates. Despite this decline, the demand environment shows signs of gradual improvement. 

Following a challenging first quarter, revenue growth rates improved in the second quarter across all business segments and nearly all regions and sectors. Group revenues in Q2 contracted by 1.9% at constant exchange rates and 2.3% on an organic basis.

In the first half of the year, clients focused on enhancing efficiency through cost transformation programs, with continued demand for non-strategic discretionary deals. However, Capgemini’s cutting-edge services in the Cloud, Data & AI, and the Intelligent Industry maintained solid traction.

Accenture is Here too

Accenture announced over $900 million in new bookings for generative AI, reaching a total of $2 billion fiscal year-to-date during its Q3 FY24 earnings report.

“We have achieved two significant milestones this quarter — with $2 billion in generative AI sales year-to-date and $500 million in revenue year-to-date — demonstrating our early lead in this critical technology,” the company said in a statement.

“We also continue to steadily increase our data and AI workforce, reaching approximately 55,000 skilled data and AI practitioners, against our goal of doubling our data and AI workforce from 40,000 to 80,000 by the end of FY2026,” said Accenture CEO Julie Sweet during the earnings call.

Meanwhile, Indian IT majors like TCS have doubled up on its AI game. The IT giant announced that it is doubling its AI pipeline to $1.5 billion this quarter, from the $900 million pipeline reported in the previous one.

TCS is now also working on around 270 AI projects worldwide. Moreover, in Q1 FY25, it applied for 154 patents and was granted 277, as revealed by TCS chief K Krithivasan. Regardless, Krithivasan said that TCS is still only experimenting with generative AI, admitting that deriving business value would take

Even Infosys has emphasised its dedication to generative AI in its latest Q1 FY25 results, but not revealed the numbers.

“We continue to see strong traction from our clients for generative AI programs delivered through Topaz. Enterprises are focusing on leveraging their own datasets for use in generative AI and large language models, which are creating a significant impact for them,” said Salil Parekh, CEO and MD of Infosys.

In Q1 FY25 earnings, Indian IT company, Wipro mentioned that it has achieved a significant win in the automotive manufacturing segment, where a US-based OEM selected the company to streamline global infrastructure services using automation and AI for improved user experience and reduced costs. 

Wipro’s AI Game

Wipro is focusing on AI-powered solutions through a consulting-led approach to transform clients’ business models. Recent wins include a project with a US-based health solutions company to integrate CMS guidelines into billing, and a collaboration with a North American financial services company to develop a GenAI-powered assistant for wealth management. 

Wipro is also dedicated to building talent, having provided foundational AI training to over 225,000 employees and advanced training to an additional 30,000. Utilising its in-house AI expertise, it is developing GenAI solutions across all units and functions, aiming to boost employee capabilities and make the company GenAI-ready. 

Further, the company is driving innovation and enhancing productivity through investments in the Lab 45 AI platform and Wipro Enterprise GenAI Studio, incorporating various GenAI tools into the software development lifecycle.

Well, HCL continues to see numerous opportunities in AI and generative AI (GenAI) business trends. They launched HCLTech AI Force, a generative AI and automation platform, and the HCLTech Enterprise AI Boundary suite to simplify and scale enterprise AI journeys. 

Notable AI-led engagements include implementing a GenAI-based solution for a global technology major and automating gaming review analysis, which resulted in significant workload reduction and a 119% increase in game reviews. 

Additionally, they are transforming the client’s content lifecycle management with GenAI features. 

The post Capgemini expands GenAI efforts with 350 new projects, 2,000+ deals in pipeline appeared first on AIM.

“Hello everyone, good morning. Welcome to my YouTube channel. Today is my first day in the Bengaluru office and I’m thrilled to show you my workplace!”

Sounds familiar? This is a common find on YouTube – software engineers capturing their busy workday and sharing it with the world. 

But how exactly do they manage to record all this “content” amidst coding and meeting requirements? 

Nikhil Soni, a Bengaluru-based software engineer with 12.8k subscribers on YouTube, gives us a peek into his daily routine from waking up to hitting the gym, enjoying a wholesome breakfast, a productive stint at work, and winding down at home—a day that seems straight out of a dream for many.

Scroll a bit further, and you’ll find Google employees vlogging about their office perks across Pune, Gurugram, and Bengaluru. Which office offers the best food and who has the comfiest furniture? These seem to be important considerations for the techies today. 

Some of these influencers portray working long hours as not entirely negative, as they complain of boredom during the weekends. 

In a post on X, Venkatesh Gupta, a techie, shared encountering a senior engineer from Microsoft in Bengaluru who drove an auto-rickshaw over the weekends to combat loneliness. 

Long hours would leave him too tired to seek additional activities on weekends. And who knows he might even apply for the Wakefit sleep internship programme next if he’s ‘tired’ from over-working after turning to ‘Namma Yatri’ to beat ‘loneliness’.  

So, perhaps the proposal by Karnataka IT firms suggesting a 14-hour workday isn’t as crazy as it sounds. 

Need for a Backup Job

As per the data by the All India IT & ITeS Employees’ Union (AIITEU), India’s IT sector laid off around 20,000 techies during the year 2023. 

And in 2024 alone, around 2,000-3,000 professionals from India’s top IT companies lost their jobs according to the IT employee union Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES).

In moments like these, social media and influence come in handy. 

A Bengaluru-based software engineer, Jishnu Mohan, was laid off in February, after sharing his views on layoffs trends and other details about the IT industry.

Mohan, who worked for Forma (formerly Twic) for four years, wrote on X: “The whole recession situation in tech is making me uneasy. Maybe at the lowest confidence level in my career.”

Following this unexpected firing, Mohan appealed for job opportunities on the social media platforms. Fortunately, he got quick responses, with several users offering leads to open positions and expressing willingness to assist with forwarding his resume.

YouTube Pays Well

According to Influencer Market Hub, YouTubers make an average of $0.018 per ad view. However, the amount also depends on factors such as the number of followers, views, clicks on ads, ad quality, ad blockers, and video length.

Source: Social Orange

Here’s an interesting story: Vanessa Chen, a 23-year-old content creator in Boston, shared that she was a computer science undergraduate with plans to become a software engineer. But she became a full-time content creator with more than 4 million followers across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok and earns a mid-six-figure income.

So, creating a YouTube channel can be a great part-time job, especially if you can produce engaging content even when busy at work!

The post A Day in the Life of a ‘Jobless’ Software Engineer appeared first on AIM.

Globally, India has the second-largest number of residents who use AI (81%). Further, Asian countries tend to display greater subjective knowledge of AI, with South Korea, China, and India leading the way.

“India offers one of the most relevant and exciting contexts for AI, considering the readiness within the country to adopt various technologies, including IoT and AI, alongside other foundational technologies,” said Shekar Sivasubramanian, the CEO of Wadhwani AI, in an exclusive interview with AIM. 

Further, he said that the country’s ability to skip extensive wired network development and move straight to wireless infrastructure demonstrates its readiness and adaptability.

Sivasubramanian also highlighted that for AI to succeed on a large scale, access to diverse data, which is abundantly available in India, is required. 

While we are at the early stages of harnessing this data, the country’s multilingual and multicultural environment provides a unique opportunity to develop context-centric, powerful AI solutions. 

“If AI works in India, it can work anywhere. This is because the diversity within the population acts as a natural protection against bias, allowing for more accurate and representative AI models,” added Sivasubramanian. 

Sivasubramanian is an industry leader who brings 40 years of global applied technology and management experience towards creating positive and sustainable impact at scale. 

He is currently driving non-profit organisation Wadhwani AI’s efforts toward establishing AI-driven solutions and ecosystems for the benefit of millions across the developing world. 

Voice is the Future

“In the next 5-10 years, we would completely stop using the thumb and use only voice-based interfaces,” the Wadhwani AI CEO predicted. 

He noted that to build meaningful voice-based interfaces, embracing the diversity of expression in India is crucial. And India’s varied linguistic and cultural landscape provides a unique testing ground for developing advanced voice AI technologies.

Along similar lines, Pramod Varma, former chief architect of Aadhaar, told AIM, “Indian entrepreneurs should really look at voice as a completely new human-computer interaction method. It could be very powerful, and I think it’s going to happen because voice is natural to humans.” 

In a previous interaction with AIM, Sarvam AI also mentioned that it is currently working on a voice-based Indic LLM, which it plans to release this year.

Earlier, chief AI scientist at Meta, Yann LeCun had said that in the next 10-15 years we won’t have smartphones, and will be using augmented reality glasses and bracelets to interact with intelligent assistants. 

“The last thing we might want is intelligent virtual assistants that help us in our daily lives. So today, all of us here are carrying a smartphone in our pockets; 10 years from now or 15 years from now, we’re not going to have smartphones anymore. We’re going to have augmented reality glasses,” said LeCun.

Even Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly stressed that neural interfaces represent the inevitable next step beyond current methods like typing on screens.

Wadhwani AI Initiatives

India grows 26% of the world’s cotton and nearly 100 million farmers rely on cotton farming for their livelihood. However, cotton is highly vulnerable to pests, causing yield uncertainty and financial distress to farmers. 

So, to help farmers protect their crops, Wadhwani AI has introduced CottonAce, an AI-powered early warning system available as an Android app. 

Lead farmers, who work with welfare programs, use the app to upload photos of pests and the AI algorithm analyses the photos, determines infestation levels, and provides actionable advice, which is then shared with neighbouring farmers, even those without smartphones.

The app is available in nine languages, including English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Odia, and Punjabi. 

In the health industry, the non-profit institute developing AI solutions for social good is an official AI partner of the Central TB Division (CTD), and are developing multiple interventions across the TB care cascade and helping India’s National TB Elimination Programme become AI-ready.

They use AI to interpret the results of the LPA test to determine drug resistance to TB. Each LPA strip encodes the drug-resistance pattern of the patient via a series of activated (dark) and inactivated (light) bands corresponding to different regions of the genome of the Tuberculosis bacterium. 

Further, it is developing multiple AI solutions to reduce morbidity and mortality for mothers and children in low-resource settings by improving the quality of primary care and strengthening the first 1,000 days of life.

The post ‘If AI Works in India, it Can Work Anywhere’ appeared first on AIM.

AI tools are revolutionising the government’s crime-solving efforts, but their full potential still remains untapped. 

Staqu Technologies, a Gurugram-based startup, is at the forefront of developing cutting-edge AI technologies to solve real-world problems. It has partnered with several state governments, including Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, to enhance public safety and security. 

While its primary focus is supporting police and security forces, only 30-35% of its revenue comes from government contracts. A majority of the revenue is generated from the private sector, where it uses video analytics for various security and operational use cases. 

This includes intrusion detection, fire detection, SOP compliance in manufacturing, retail industry analytics like tracking queue lengths, customer churn, and more. 

These applications have proven to be more lucrative, even though security remains a critical and growing concern.

Every day, the company identifies over 400 criminals. Over the past six or seven years, it has identified more than 30,000 criminals. This represents a significant value proposition for the Indian ecosystem, given the high population density, which makes crime and evasion relatively easier. 

While it is focused on contributing to society’s safety, generating revenue is also important since the organisation incurs significant costs, particularly on salaries for AI scientists and researchers. 

How can AI Solve Crime in India?

Drug trafficking in Punjab is a significant crime for the police to crack. It’s no longer just a crime; it has become a business for many in the border areas. 

For instance, in Afghanistan, one kilogram of heroin costs around INR 1 lakh, but by the time it reaches Delhi, it is worth INR 3 crore. This makes it a lucrative business, and thus, it is essential to track the individuals involved.

In an exclusive interview with AIM, Atul Rai, the co-founder & CEO at Staqu Technologies, said, “We provide a tool that analyses visual, audio, and textual data for the police. While we do not conduct the analysis ourselves, we offer a platform that the police use for their investigations.” 

“Our tool allows for unstructured data analysis. Users simply input the data, and the tool processes it without needing extensive configuration. Given our experience working with the police for nearly a decade, we understand the specific needs and requirements,” Rai said.

Tools like this require a boost as the NCRB data suggests that nearly 40% of cases registered by Punjab Police in 2022 under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act were against those caught with drugs meant for personal consumption.

In Punjab, drones have been recovered and drugs seized, making it one of the top states as far as drug seizures are concerned.

Working on similar lines, Quadrant Technologies Confidential has developed NarcGuideBot, an AI-powered assistance in Narcotics Investigations. The tool is designed to help inexperienced officers in complex drug enforcement.

Further, the tool expedites form-related tasks by simplifying form access, providing accurate filling instructions, and ensuring legal compliance through error-detection systems. 

Rai further mentioned that the same tool is used in other states for different issues. For example, Uttar Pradesh utilises it for organised crime and gang analysis, while Bihar uses it to address illegal liquor problems. 

Despite the variations, the core functionality remains the same, providing insights into gang activities and crime patterns. The tool can identify gang members, track their crimes, and analyse their modus operandi, all through automated data extraction and analysis.

Next Stop: Karnataka

Staqu Technologies is likely to make an official announcement within the next two months regarding its operation in Karnataka. The company is active in the state, with a team of about 15 members based in the Bengaluru office.

Currently, it is working in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh’s healthcare sector, monitoring outpatient departments in hospitals and managing primary health centres and community health centres to ensure doctors are available and patients aren’t left waiting. 

This data is sent to a command centre in Amaravati for analysis.

Regarding border security, its presence is established in Jammu & Kashmir, working towards addressing the challenges on the Jammu and China borders.

Globally, it is already operating in the Middle East with 20 enterprise clients and has started its journey in the US, recently closing a deal there. 

Bigger Impact Calls for Bigger Team

Staqu Technologies team consists of around 100 people, with about 65-70 of them in engineering and research. The company has also partnered with IIT Delhi.

After pursuing his master’s in AI from Manchester, Atul Rai worked with the Graphene Lab that won a Nobel Prize in 2010. He returned to India in 2014 and joined Anurag Saini and Pankaj Sharma in founding the company.

In 2023, the company published five research papers, and published two in CVPR this year. It is further committed to developing its own IP and models. 

“Although we may not be as well-known for securing large funding rounds, our impact in security, especially with tools like G20 and Crime GPT for police forces, has earned us recognition and a strong reputation in the field,” Rai stated. 

The post AI Could Transform Crime Solving in India—If Only the Govt Stepped Up appeared first on AIM.

Union Finance Minister introduced an internship scheme to provide opportunities to 1 crore youth in the top 500 companies in five years. It offers 12 months of real-time business environment exposure to the candidates with an allowance of INR 5000 per month.

Companies are expected to bear the training cost and 10% of the internship cost from their CSR funds.

Further for skilling of youths to generate employment opportunities, Nirmala Sitharaman proposed INR 1.48 crore to skill 20 lakh youth over the next five years. 

She mentioned that 1,000 industrial training institutes will be upgraded.   

Speaking on Union Budget 2024-25, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “In this Budget, the government has announced ‘Employment Linked Incentive scheme. This will help generate many employment opportunities.”

“Under this scheme, the government will give the first salary to those who are newly entering the workforce. Youth from villages will be able to work in the country’s top companies under the apprenticeship program.”

India’s Youth Unemployment

According to the India Employment Report 2024, 83% of unemployed Indians are youth. Despite a surge in higher education enrollments, the quality of education remains a significant concern. 

Critics argue that outdated curricula in Indian colleges fail to meet industry requirements, creating a big gap between what students learn and the skills they need for the job market. 

Back in 2015, esteemed scientist and Bharat Ratna awardee CNR Rao stated that 90% of Indian universities have outdated curricula, contributing to the country’s absence from the top 100 global universities list. 

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