Sarvam Launches Indus AI Chat App amidst Growing Competition
Indian AI startup, Sarvam, has stepped into the fast-growing generative AI market with the launch of its Indus chat app. The app, which is available for both web and mobile users, comes as a direct competitor to the dominating global players like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. The announcement was made on Friday, marking a significant step into a market that has been largely dominated by these international giants. You can find more details about this news Here.
India: A Key Battleground for Generative AI Adoption
India has emerged as a significant player in the AI industry, with ChatGPT by OpenAI alone boasting more than 100 million weekly active users in the country. In fact, Anthropic revealed that India accounts for 5.8% of total Claude usage, making it the second-largest user base after the U.S. The launch of Indus is expected to stir up the competition further in this increasingly crucial market.
About Indus and Sarvam’s Recent Initiatives
The Indus app is a chat interface for Sarvam’s newly announced 105B model, a 105-billion-parameter large language model. This follows the unveiling of Sarvam’s 105B and 30B models at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi earlier this week. The startup also announced some significant enterprise initiatives and hardware plans at the summit. Furthermore, Sarvam revealed partnerships with companies such as HMD and Bosch to bring AI to Nokia feature phones and create AI-enabled automotive applications, respectively.
Indus, which is currently in beta version and available on iOS, Android, and the web, allows users to either type or speak queries and receive responses in both text and audio formats. Users can sign in using their phone number, Google account, or Apple ID. However, it appears that the service is limited to India at the moment.
Image Credits:Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch
Limitations and Future Plans
While the Indus app promises a lot, it does come with some limitations. For instance, users cannot delete their chat history without deleting their entire account. Also, there is no option to turn off the app’s reasoning feature, which can sometimes slow response times. Sarvam has also cautioned that access might be restricted as it gradually expands its compute capacity.
The company is gradually rolling out Indus on a limited compute capacity, hence users may initially hit a waitlist. “We will expand access over time,” Sarvam co-founder Pratyush Kumar assured, adding that the company is actively seeking feedback from users.
Sarvam’s Journey and the Indian AI Startup Scene
Sarvam, founded in 2023, has managed to raise $41 million from investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Peak XV Partners, and Khosla Ventures. The startup is focused on building large language models tailor-made for India.
Sarvam is part of a small yet growing group of Indian startups that are trying to create domestic alternatives to global artificial intelligence platforms. This comes as India seeks to have greater control over its AI infrastructure, marking a significant shift in the country’s tech landscape.
