News Analysis India

Tag: Ola

  • Indian Tech Leaders Stand Behind Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal In His Fight Against Microsoft And LinkedIn |

    New Delhi: Indian tech industry leaders have come out in support of Ola Founder and CEO, Bhavish Aggarwal, after his tirade against Microsoft-owned LinkedIn for deleting his posts and “bullying Indians” into agreeing with the Big Tech platforms or cancelling them out.

    Homegrown IT software company Zoho’s CEO Sridhar Vembu agreed with Aggarwal, saying “We in India have to strongly resist this woke imperialism”. “It is best understood as a fanatical religious doctrine that masquerades as a socio-political movement,” Vembu posted on X social media platform.

    Edtech company Unacademy CEO Gaurav Munjal earlier posted that this is so “f***** up on LinkedIn’s part”. An angry Ola CEO on Saturday announced the termination of Microsoft Azure cloud’s services and moved the entire workload of his company to his own AI venture called Krutrim. (Also Read: Get Free Wi-Fi While Travelling In India; Check This Government Scheme, Benefits, Steps To Avail Facility)

    “We’ve decided to move our entire workload out of Azure to our own Krutrim cloud within the next week,” he said in a blog post. When reached, LinkedIn or Microsoft did not comment on Aggarwal’s blog post.

    The tussle began when Ola CEO shared his thoughts on gender pronouns, with a LinkedIn post on “pronoun illness”. The LinkedIn AI chatbot used “they” and “their” to address the founder. The professional networking platform later deleted Aggarwal’s posts “without notifying him”, leading to an outburst from the Ola founder.

    “Proud of you Bhavish. When CEOs like you show the way, I’m sure many will emulate you. It is one thing to coax people to be inclusive but quite another to use bullying and cancelling techniques to impose a fake inclusiveness with dubious benefits. May Dharma always guide you,” Author Sahana Singh posted on X. (Also Read: What Is ‘iPhone Finger’? Is Your Smartphone Changing Your Body? Here’s Everything You Need To Know)

    Aggarwal has said he will work with the domestic developer community to build a digital public infrastructure (DPI) social media framework and the only ‘community guidelines’ should be the Indian law. “Woke” was a word earlier used within Black communities in the US to refer to an “awareness of inequality”. It is now being frequently used in political parlance to describe anything that appears too liberal or progressive. 

  • Ola Krutrim Opens AI Cloud Infrastructure For Developers, Launches Mobile App

    Krutrim has announced Model-as-a-Service (MaaS), offering developers access to its LLMs as well as open-source models being hosted on its cloud at cheaper costs.

  • Bhavish Aggarwal launches India’s AI chatbot ‘Krutrim AI’, Challenges ChatGPT And Google’s Gemini |

    New Delhi: On Monday, Bhavish Aggarwal, the founder and chairman of Ola, introduced ‘Krutrim AI,’ India’s new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. This chatbot aims to compete with other prominent AI systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. With this latest development, Ola ventures into the realm of AI-driven conversational technology, showcasing its commitment to innovation in the digital space.

    The AI chatbot is currently being released in a public beta phase. (Also Read: Can Dehydration Lead To Stroke, As Mentioned By Zerodha’s Nithin Kamath?)

    “As promised, starting the @Krutrim AI public beta rollout today,” Aggarwal wrote on X. He Further added, “This is a start for us and our first-generation product. Lots more to come and this will also improve significantly as we build on this base. Do give us your feedback,”. (Also Read: End-User Spending On Security, Risk Management To Reach $2.9 Billion In India: Reports)

    He mentioned that the chatbot will assist users in over 10 Indian languages, such as English, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, Gujarati, and even Hinglish (a blend of Hindi and English).

    “Krutrim marks the dawn of a new era in the AI computing stack for our nation. We will aim to innovate alongside the world and define future paradigms,” Aggarwal stated. The launch comes after Krutrim became the country’s fastest unicorn and also the first AI unicorn in the country, after it closed its first round of funding.

    The funding round, led by investors such as Matrix Partners India and others, garnered an investment of $50 million in equity at a valuation of $1 billion. (With Inputs From IANS)

  • Krutrim Becomes India’s 1st AI Unicorn; Check All About Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal’s Venture |

    New Delhi: On Friday, the Indian AI company Krutrim achieved something big! It became the fastest unicorn in the country and also the first AI unicorn. What does that mean? Well, it closed its first round of funding where investors, including Matrix Partners India, put in $50 million. This investment valued Krutrim at a whopping $1 billion.

    In simpler terms, a lot of people believe in Krutrim’s potential and give them a lot of money to help them grow. Let’s have a look at the details of the company. (Also Read: Now You Can Choose Any Hospital For Treatment; Know All About Game-Changing Rule For Health Insurance)

    The Birth Of Krutrim Si Designs

    Bhavish Aggarwal and Tenneti joined hands to establish Krutrim Si Designs, a tech venture under the umbrella of ANI Technologies Limited, the parent company of Ola Cabs and Ola Electric. (Also Read: No Need For Thermometer! Now This Smartphone Can Measure Your Body Temperature)

    What Is The Meaning Of Word ‘Krutrim’?

    Named after the Sanskrit word for ‘artificial,’ Krutrim is not just a buzzword; it’s a large language model (LLM) that has undergone training on a staggering 2 trillion ‘tokens’ — these are like building blocks of language used in everyday conversations.

    Models Of Krutrim

    Krutrim debuts with a base model, set to hit the market next month. But hold onto your seats because the advanced Krutrim Pro is scheduled for an early release next year, promising cutting-edge capabilities for problem-solving and task execution.

    Language Diversity

    Krutrim comprehends 20 Indian languages and can generate content in 10 of them, including Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, and Telugu. The team proudly asserts that Krutrim outshines even GPT-4 in supporting Indic languages.

    How Krutrim Works?

    Krutrim employs a custom tokenizer to interpret various languages and scripts, making it a versatile linguistic wizard. In head-to-head comparisons with other open-source LLMs trained with similar data volumes, Krutrim emerges victorious across a range of industry-standard benchmarks.

  • Passenger Booked Ola Cab For Rs 730, Get Jaw-Dropping Rs 5,000 Bill: Here's What Happened NEXT

    The initial fare displayed was Rs 730. However, upon reaching his destination in Mathikere, the driver demanded a staggering Rs 5,000.

  • Ola, Uber, 10 other cab aggregators granted provisional license, Maharashtra government tells Bombay HC

    By PTI

    MUMBAI: The Maharashtra government on Monday told Bombay High Court it has granted provisional license to 12 cab aggregators, including Ola and Uber, for a period of one month.

    The state government submitted a report to a division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice M S Karnik, which is hearing a petition filed by advocate Savina Crasto against transport aggregators alleging lack of a consumer grievance redressal mechanism to resolve complaints against Uber.

    As per the report submitted by the government, the Regional Transport Authority (RTA) has been empowered to act as Licensing Authority to grant license to aggregators.

    The RTA, till date, has received 29 applications from cab aggregators across the state, of which 12, including Ola and Uber, have been granted provisional license, while the rest of the applications are under scrutiny, the report said.

    The HC said it would peruse the report and hear the matter further on Tuesday.

    It had, last month, noted that cab aggregator companies cannot be allowed to ply without license and had directed them to apply for it with the Maharashtra government.

  • Flipkart best, Ola, Uber worst in taking care of gig workers: Report

    Express News Service

    BENGALURU: Ola and Uber, two of the biggest ride-sharing companies in India, scored zero, while Flipkart got the highest rating of seven in providing good working conditions to their gig workers, revealed a recent study.

    The report was prepared by Fairwork India as part of the Centre for IT and Public Policy (CITAPP), International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B) and Oxford University. The study was taken up to highlight the working condition of gig workers across the country.

    The report — ‘The Fairwork India Ratings 2021: Labour Standards in the Platform Economy’ — studied 11 platforms, Ola, Uber, Amazon, Zomato, Swiggy, Dunzo, BigBasket, Flipkart, PharmEasy, Porter and Urban Company.  

    The platforms were rated on a scale of ten on fair pay, fair conditions, fair contracts, fair management and fair representation given to their employees. Ola, Uber and Porter, which is a moving services app, scored zero, while Flipkart got seven, which is the highest of all the platforms studied. But none scored across all criteria.

    A point was given to each criterion if platforms satisfied basic conditions, like grievance redressal (management), minimum wage, accessible contract and others. Another point was given if the platforms went above the minimum requirements. 

    ‘No formalised union for workers’

    Onlyly Flipkart and BigBasket scored a point in providing minimum wage to workers, but they did not get any points on providing a living wage, which is over the minimum wage if workers could not sustain themselves and provide for their families.

    Ola and Uber scored a zero, which meant that they did not pay minimum wages to their workers. Representatives of Ola and Uber did not react though TNINIE tried to contact them repeatedly.

    Also, these companies do not have a policy to help workers in case of a risk to their health and safety, have not provided clear and accessible contracts, do not inform workers of loss of pay or changes in contracts, and have no formalised union for workers to voice their concerns and give suggestions.

    “We reached out to all the platforms, but only some responded. There has been no response from Ola and Uber after we sent them the preliminary findings,” said Prof Balaji Parthasarathy, one of the principal investigators for the report.

  • ‘Ensure easy passenger pick up for app-based cabs at airports’: Parliament committee to AAI

    By PTI
    NEW DELHI: The Airports Authority of India (AAI) needs to put proper signs and mark separate pathways at its airports so that picking up passengers becomes easier for app-based cabs as it would reduce traffic jams, said a Parliamentary Committee report released on Friday.

    The AAI, which works under the Ministry of Civil Aviation, owns and operates 125-odd airports across the country.

    “Most of the designated pick-up points (at AAI-operated airports) of UBER, OLA, etc. do not have appropriate identification marks for the passenger or the driver to identify his exact location at the airport,” said the Parliamentary Committee on Public Undertakings’ report tabled in Rajya Sabha on Friday.

    ​ALSO READ | New terminal building at Adampur airport to be ready by mid-2021: AAI

    In the absence of such signages or marks, it said, passengers and cab drivers face difficulty in communicating their exact locations resulting in wastage of precious time and causing crowding and traffic jams at the UBER and OLA pick-up points.

    Major airports, including in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad, are run by private companies and not by the AAI.

    The committee said that appropriate circles be marked in different colours on the ground at the airports with appropriate identification numbers so that passengers can communicate their exact locations to the drivers.

    “The identification number can also be displayed on the pillars or side walls in the area of the pick-up points which is easily visible to the drivers to locate the passengers,” it mentioned.

    Similarly, pathways can also be marked in numbers or colours for the cab drivers to communicate their exact locations, the report said.

    If the pick-up points are in an open area, trees or ground may be marked with identification numbers for the convenience of the passengers and the drivers, it stated.

    The committee said for the safety and security of passengers, a database of local taxi drivers registered at airports also needs to be maintained.