The artificial intelligence landscape in India just got a major shake-up. While the world has been buzzing about ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, a homegrown contender has entered the ring with something genuinely different.
Meet Kruti.ai, developed by Krutrim—the brainchild of Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal. This isn't just another chatbot trying to mimic global players; it's India's first agentic AI assistant that actually gets things done.
Conceptual illustration of agentic AI workflow, showing autonomous AI processes and technological connections
Beyond the Usual Chat: What Makes Kruti Special
Most AI assistants today are great at having conversations, answering questions, and maybe writing some content. But they stop there. Kruti takes a fundamentally different approach. Instead of just talking about booking a cab or ordering food, it actually does it for you.
This shift from conversation to action is what defines "agentic AI"—systems that can reason, plan, and execute tasks autonomously. Kruti AI assistant interface showing multi-agent tasks like cab booking, bill payment, food delivery, and information gathering in a minimalist dashboard design
When you tell Kruti "Book me a cab to the airport" or "Order my usual lunch," it doesn't just provide suggestions or links. It connects directly with services like Ola Cabs and the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), understands your preferences, and completes the entire transaction within the chat interface.
The system can even handle bill payments, generate images, and conduct deep research—all while remembering your past interactions and adapting to your communication style.
The Man Behind the Vision
Bhavish Aggarwal isn't new to disrupting established markets. After transforming urban mobility with Ola and making significant strides in electric vehicles with Ola Electric, he's now setting his sights on artificial intelligence. His vision goes beyond creating another AI company; he wants to build India's first complete AI computing stack.
Krutrim, which means “artificial” in Sanskrit, became India's first AI unicorn in January 2024, achieving a $1 billion valuation in record time after raising $50 million from Matrix Partners India and other investors. This milestone wasn't just about the money—it represented a statement that India could compete globally in the most cutting-edge technology sectors.
Technical Prowess: What Powers Kruti
At the heart of Kruti lies the Krutrim V2 large language model, a 12-billion parameter dense transformer model built on the Mistral-NeMo architecture. But here's where it gets interesting: unlike many AI models that are primarily trained on English data, Krutrim V2 has been trained on the largest known Indic language dataset, covering over 2 trillion tokens across various domains including web data, code, mathematics, and Indian cultural context.
A humanoid robot analyzing complex mathematical formulas, representing AI's capabilities in advanced computation and learning
The model supports 13 Indian languages natively and can understand 22 languages in total. More importantly, it's designed to work on smartphones with potentially poor internet connectivity—addressing a real challenge for millions of Indian users. The system can process multiple input types: text, voice, images, and documents, making it truly multimodal.
Agentic AI vs. Traditional Chatbots: Understanding the Difference
The term "agentic AI" might sound like marketing jargon, but it represents a significant technological leap. Traditional chatbots, even sophisticated ones, operate reactively—they respond to queries based on predefined patterns or rules.
Agentic AI systems like Kruti can proactively plan multistep tasks, make decisions, and adapt their approach based on outcomes. Here's a practical example: If you ask a traditional chatbot about booking a flight, it might provide links to airline websites or travel booking platforms.
Kruti, on the other hand, could potentially understand your travel preferences, check multiple booking sites, compare prices, and actually make the reservation—all while keeping you informed through natural conversation.
The system uses what Krutrim calls "agent-to-agent protocols" where different specialized agents work together to complete complex tasks. One agent might handle natural language understanding, another manages the booking process, and a third ensures payment security—all coordinated seamlessly in the background.
Market Context: India's AI Revolution
Kruti's launch comes at a pivotal moment for India's AI sector. The country's artificial intelligence market is projected to reach $12.4 billion by 2033, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 27.6%. More impressively, India now accounts for 16% of the global AI talent pool, with over 600,000 professionals expected to double by 2027.
The Indian market presents unique challenges that global AI players often struggle with: linguistic diversity, varying levels of digital literacy, infrastructure constraints, and cultural nuances. Kruti's India-first approach addresses these systematically. Its multilingual capabilities, voice-first design, and integration with local services like Ola's ecosystem give it advantages that international competitors would find difficult to replicate.
Real-World Applications and User Experience
What sets Kruti apart isn't just its technical capabilities but how it integrates into daily life. The assistant can understand context like "order my usual" and execute the request based on past behavior. It can read bills from photographs, understand the payment details, and offer to settle them immediately.
For users who prefer voice interactions—and India is predominantly a voice-first market—Kruti can understand different Indian accents and dialects, something that global AI assistants often struggle with. The system also offers read-aloud responses, making it accessible to users with varying levels of literacy.
Current Limitations and Market Reception
Despite its impressive capabilities, Kruti faces some practical limitations. Currently, it's primarily integrated with Ola's ecosystem of services. While this provides deep functionality within that environment, it limits the breadth of tasks the assistant can perform compared to more established platforms. Industry observers have noted that Krutrim's earlier products faced criticism for lacking polish compared to global competitors.
Some developers have expressed skepticism about the technical maturity of Krutrim's infrastructure compared to established cloud providers. However, the company appears to be addressing these concerns with continuous improvements and a focus on real-world utility over feature quantity.
The Broader Implications
Kruti represents more than just another AI assistant; it's part of India's broader strategy to achieve technological self-reliance. With government initiatives like the National AI Strategy and significant investments in digital public infrastructure, India is positioning itself as a global AI powerhouse.
The success of agentic AI systems like Kruti could reshape how we interact with technology. Instead of switching between multiple apps to complete tasks, users might rely on intelligent assistants that can navigate complex workflows autonomously. This shift could be particularly transformative in India, where smartphone penetration is high but app juggling can be challenging on lower-end devices.
Looking Forward: The Road Ahead
Krutrim has ambitious plans for Kruti's future. The company is developing an SDK that will allow other developers to create domain-specific AI agents, potentially expanding Kruti's capabilities across healthcare, education, finance, and other sectors. This platform approach could create an ecosystem of specialized AI assistants, all built on the same foundational technology.
The team is also working on expanding language support and improving integration with non-Ola services. As more Indian and international platforms adopt Kruti's APIs, the assistant's practical utility should grow significantly.
Conclusion: A Promising Start
Kruti.ai represents a significant milestone in India's AI journey. While it may not yet match the conversational sophistication of ChatGPT or the broad knowledge base of Google's models, it offers something uniquely valuable: the ability to actually accomplish tasks in the real world, designed specifically for Indian users.
The true test will be user adoption and retention. Can Kruti provide enough practical value to change how people interact with digital services? Will its India-first approach prove sustainable as global competitors adapt their offerings for local markets? These questions will be answered in the coming months as more users experience this new paradigm of AI assistance.
What's clear is that Kruti isn't just competing on features—it's pioneering a new category of AI that could define the next phase of human-computer interaction. For a country that has often been seen as a market for global technologies rather than their creator, Kruti represents something more profound: India's emergence as an AI innovator on the world stage.
The journey from conversation to action in AI has begun, and it's starting in India. Whether Kruti becomes the defining AI assistant of the next decade remains to be seen, but its launch marks an important inflection point—one where Indian innovation moves from following global trends to potentially setting them.
The success of Kruti could pave the way for a new generation of task-oriented AI assistants, fundamentally changing how we think about artificial intelligence from a passive knowledge source to an active digital companion that truly understands and serves our daily needs.
