BENGALURU:
Ola
co-founder and CEO
Bhavish Aggarwal
on Thursday said that artificial intelligence (AI) sovereignty is absolutely necessary for India and that the country needs to build a future on its terms to control the technologies in the time to come.
“Otherwise, we will just end up becoming monthly active user farms for global companies,” he told TOI on the sidelines of an event in Hosur that saw new product announcements across Ola’s electric vehicle, cab and AI businesses.
Ola has its EV factory and its upcoming EV battery making facility in Hosur.
The Bengaluru-headquartered company said its AI company
Krutrim
is working on manufacturing India’s first AI silicon chip by 2026. If successful, it will pit Ola against the likes of Nvidia, AMD and Intel. Global technology giants Meta, Google, Apple and Amazon are also making proprietary AI chips.
Ola announced strategic partnerships with global majors such as chip design company ARM and Canadian AI company Untether AI to build the chips. At the Hosur event, there was a video message from ARM CEO Rene Haas expressing happiness at partnering with Ola Krutrim. Krutrim’s first family of chips include Bodhi for AI, Sarv for general compute, and Ojas for edge compute.
The
AI chip
is expected to enable development of faster and more efficient AI systems.
“We are still exploring foundries, we will go with a global tier I or II foundry. Taiwan is a global leader, and so is Korea. I visited Taiwan a couple of months back and the ecosystem is keen on partnering with India,” Aggarwal said.
Krutrim also launched Krutrim cloud with AI and general-purpose capabilities, in addition to a wide range of purpose-built AI services for the developer community to build products. It has made these data centre services worth Rs 100 crore completely free for developers and enterprises alike till Diwali.
New motorcycles:
In its EV business, Ola Electric Mobility, the company launched its first set of
electric motorcycles
due for deliveries from the fourth quarter of the current financial year.
Ola Electric Mobility, founded in 2017, also released a beta version of its MoveOS 5 software update, which introduces integrations with Ola Maps and Krutrim AI.
The scooter-maker launched Roadster X, Roadster, and Roadster Pro with prices starting from Rs 74,999. It also teased two other new motorcycles, Sportster and Arrowhead.
The EV maker expects to integrate its indigenous Bharat 4680 cell into its vehicles starting the first quarter of the financial year ended March 2026. The cell is currently under trial production at Ola’s Gigafactory, and will be the first such in India when released.
Ola Cabs rebranding, expansion:
Ola Cabs, Aggarwal’s original ride-sharing business, has been rebranded as Ola Consumer. The business will expand to new cities.
Ola Consumer said it will offer one year of free Krutrim Cloud for all ONDC suppliers, applicable for startups and small and medium enterprises. D2C (direct to consumer) brands will also be given one year of free access to Krutrim cloud.
Ola food and grocery on ONDC surpassed 40,000 orders per day in Bengaluru in a pilot concluded this year.
The company showcased a prototype of a fully automated shipping container-sized dark store, which it plans to manufacture at scale. The containers can process about 7-10,000 orders a day, Aggarwal said. Any ecommerce business can use this to stock products and make deliveries from. The company said it’s partnering with ITC, Marico and Bombay Shaving Company on this.
Given the growth of quick commerce in India, there could be significant opportunity for these ready-made dark stores.
