Affordable AI Agents Target 50M Indian Businesses via WhatsApp
Indian AI startups like Sarvam AI and Krutrim are shipping affordable AI agents priced between $0 and $80 per month. These agents, available in over 10 languages, are being delivered via WhatsApp to target an estimated 50 million small and medium-sized businesses in India often overlooked by larger enterprise software providers.
- Sarvam AI was co-founded by Vivek Raghavan, who was the Chief Product Manager and Biometric Architect for India's national digital identity program, Aadhaar, and Pratyush Kumar, who has a background in AI research at Microsoft, IBM, and co-founded AI4Bharat to advance Indian language AI. Krutrim's founder, Bhavish Aggarwal, is also the co-founder and CEO of Ola, the Indian ride-hailing and electric vehicle company. - Krutrim, which means "artificial" in Sanskrit, achieved unicorn status with a $1 billion valuation after a $50 million funding round led by Matrix Partners India. The startup is not only developing large language models trained on over two trillion tokens with a high representation of Indian languages but also aims to build a complete AI infrastructure stack, including its own chiplets and data centers. - Sarvam AI has raised $53.8 million from investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Peak XV Partners, and Khosla Ventures. The company was selected by the Indian government's IndiaAI Mission to help develop the nation's sovereign large language model, gaining access to thousands of NVIDIA GPUs for training. - The delivery of these AI agents via WhatsApp taps into a massive existing user base, as India is the world's largest WhatsApp market with over 535 million users. An estimated 73% of Indian businesses already use WhatsApp for customer communication, making it the country's most popular business messaging platform. - This push for affordable AI coincides with high adoption readiness among Indian small businesses. According to a LinkedIn study, 95.6% of Indian SMBs are already investing in or planning to adopt AI, with 74% using AI in sales for sharper targeting and automated follow-ups. - While optimism is high, adoption faces hurdles. A Nasscom-Meta study found that while 94% of tech-enabled MSMEs see AI's growth potential, 65% lack awareness of available tools and 72% cite a need for AI training programs. This creates an opportunity for easily deployable, low-cost solutions. - The focus on multilingual, voice-based AI is critical for the Indian market. Sarvam AI is developing models for 22 Indian languages and offers voice-based generative AI tools. Krutrim's model can understand 22 Indian languages and generate content in ten, including Hinglish.
