India’s first AI unicorn, Krutrim, has launched Kruti, a homegrown AI assistant designed to move beyond the limitations of conventional chatbots and take on everyday tasks—from booking cabs to ordering food—in a more natural, intuitive way.
The launch marks the company’s latest attempt to position itself as a key player in India’s growing AI landscape, following criticism that its previous offerings lacked the technical depth and polish of global rivals. Developers ET spoke to earlier this month questioned the performance of Krutrim’s language models and cloud platform, calling them subpar compared to more established hyperscalers.
Kruti is built with what the company calls “agentic” capabilities—allowing it to act on behalf of users, rather than simply responding to prompts. It supports both voice and text inputs and is capable of understanding intent, executing tasks, and adapting to user preferences over time. The assistant works in 13 Indian languages and can respond in different tones and lengths depending on the context of the conversation.
Krutrim says Kruti can handle a wide range of tasks, including cab booking, bill payments, food ordering, and image generation. It also supports read-aloud responses and research assistance, positioning itself as a hands-on digital helper rather than just a conversational interface. The assistant remembers previous interactions and integrates with multiple apps and services to personalise its responses.
The new offering replaces the company’s earlier chatbot beta and runs on Krutrim V2, a proprietary large language model combined with open-source components to support multimodal capabilities. According to the company, this combination allows Kruti to perform reliably even with India’s bandwidth constraints and usage patterns.
“Kruti is the first real step towards the future of AI where technology doesn’t just talk back, but actually helps you get things done,” said Krutrim founder Bhavish Aggarwal. “We’ve built Kruti to work the way Indians live—multilingual, mobile-first and intuitive.”
One of the more developer-friendly features is an embeddable software development kit (SDK), which allows third-party platforms to integrate Kruti’s capabilities—including memory handling and tool orchestration—with minimal coding. Krutrim says that these features, including research tools and image generation, will be offered free of charge to users, part of its broader push to make AI more accessible and affordable in India.
The assistant also tries to minimise the friction users often face when jumping between apps. It delivers responses in simple formats like summaries, tables or story-like narratives, tailored to the user’s context.
The launch follows a challenging period for the company. Despite a $1 billion valuation and $50 million in funding in early 2024, Krutrim reported no operational revenue in its first financial year. It logged a net loss of ₹2.84 crore, though this was partially offset by interest income from bank deposits. The bulk of its spending—₹134.86 crore—went into research and development across silicon, cloud infrastructure and AI services.
At the same time, Krutrim has faced scrutiny after the reported suicide of one of its engineers, allegedly linked to work-related stress. A police investigation is ongoing, with the manager of the AI division being summoned for questioning, according to a report by CNBC-TV18.
With Kruti, Krutrim is betting that a highly localised, action-oriented assistant can carve out a niche in a competitive AI market dominated by global giants. Whether the product finds mass adoption will depend on whether it can deliver on its promise of being more than just another chatbot—and prove itself genuinely useful in the daily lives of Indian users.
Content Courtesy – CNBC
