Homegrown artificial intelligence (AI) company Ola Krutrim on Saturday announced to open up its cloud platform to enterprises, researchers and developers to build their own products, along with launching a mobile app.
The cloud platform will provide access to AI computing infrastructure, Krutrim’s foundational Models and open-source models to developers.
The Krutrim AI assistant app, built on the company’s own large-language model (LLM), will simplify leveraging the power of AI for everyone, the company said in a statement.
“In line with our Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of ‘Viksit Bharat’, we are committed to developing full-stack AI capabilities in India, for the world,” said Bhavish Aggarwal, Founder, Ola Krutrim.
The AI company in January this year became India’s fastest unicorn, and also the first AI unicorn in the country.
“Our Krutrim assistant app will revolutionise the adoption of GenAI with its ability for a seamless integration into everyone’s life,” Aggarwal said at an event here.
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.
The company said it is also planning to release models for voice, image understanding and generation, and pre-tuned LLM agents.
The Robotics for Good Youth Challenge 2024-2025 is a global initiative of the ITU, as part of AI for Good, the UN platform on artificial intelligence …reports Asian Lite News
The Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on Saturday joined hands to organise the first ever UN-based educational robotics championship in India in October this year.
The Robotics for Good Youth Challenge 2024-2025 is a global initiative of the ITU, as part of AI for Good, the UN platform on artificial intelligence (AI).
The event, to be organised by IIT Delhi’s technology innovation hub IHFC, will put Indian students and their robotics expertise on the global map. It also looks at targeting students to offer robotic solutions for disaster management, which is a critical focus area across the world.
The challenge is designed for two age groups — Junior (Class 6-8) and Senior (Class 9-12) — where the participants will get to design, build, and programme a robot that completes a mission based on promoting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The focus is on Robotics for Good, emphasising addressing natural disasters like earthquakes, seismic risk prediction, and soil and subsurface studies. The primary objective is to enable swift intervention during disasters to effectively minimise their impact.
An India qualifying tournament will be held on October 17 at the International Exhibition Convention Centre in Delhi, before a qualifying tournament leading to the grand finale in Geneva during the AI for Good Global Summit 2025.
IHFC aims to handhold the participants, foster innovation in their robotics for good creation, and train them to create something sustainable for managing disasters.
Tech giant Apple saw a lull last year due to “poor economy and the absence of new models” and declined 8.5 per cent (YoY)….reports Asian Lite News
As artificial intelligence (AI) begins to transform personal computing and mobile experience for millions of users globally, can the new technology also drive the slow pace of growth for tablets?
Although the global tablet market began to show some signs of recovery in the January-March quarter this year, as per the IDC, the real gains are yet to come after more than two years of decline.
Anuroopa Nataraj, senior research analyst with IDC, says that the real gains will come from the next refresh cycle, “followed by growth within commercial segments as more tablets are used in the education sector and the gig economy”.
However, these factors will not help as competition from PCs and smartphones will “contribute to a lacklustre outlook for the tablet market”.
Meanwhile, global tablet shipments registered a modest growth of 0.5 per cent (year-on-year) in the first quarter this year, reaching 30.8 million units.
Tech giant Apple saw a lull last year due to “poor economy and the absence of new models” and declined 8.5 per cent (YoY).
The company is set to launch new iPads next week. South Korean company Samsung was second with 6.7 million units in the first quarter, a decline of 5.8 per cent, according to the report.
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced several measures to be taken against Turkey
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Turkey’s decision to suspend trade with Israel had one singular purpose, which is to compel the Israeli government into a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
He made the remarks on Friday during a meeting with the board of directors of the Independent Industrialists and Businessmen Association in Istanbul, according to the Presidency’s website.
The President also noted that the government will coordinate and consult with the business community to manage the consequences of halting trade with Israel, Xinhua news agency reported.
Turkey on Thursday halted all trade activities with Israel due to the latter’s “non-stop violence” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Turkish Trade Ministry.
Erdogan also said that this decision would set a precedent for other countries unsettled by the current situation.
Israel announces countermeasures
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced several measures to be taken against Turkey following the latter’s decision to halt all trade activities with Israel due to “non-stop violence” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The Ministry said on Friday in a statement that in a discussion carried out by senior officials from the Foreign and Economy ministries, as well as the Israel Tax Authority, it was decided to work towards reducing any economic connection between Turkey and the West Bank and Gaza, Xinhua news agency reported.
Additionally, it was decided to take action in international economic forums to explore sanctions against Turkey for violating trade agreements, to create an alternative list for the Israeli economy across various sectors and products, and to support affected Israeli export sectors.
It noted that Turkey is the Palestinian Authority’s largest importing country.
According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2023, Israeli exports of goods to Turkey amounted to $1.57 billion, while Israeli imports from Turkey reached $4.61 billion.
Meanwhile, Israel filed a complaint to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) against Turkey for its decision to suspend trade, said a statement from Israel’s Economy Minister Nir Barkat.
The partnership aims to assist Namibia modernise its financial ecosystem by leveraging India’s UPI technology and experience…reports Asian Lite News
NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL), the international arm of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), on Thursday said that it partnered with the Bank of Namibia (BoN) to support them in developing a Unified Payment Interface (UPI)-like instant payment system for the country.
The partnership aims to assist Namibia modernise its financial ecosystem by leveraging India’s UPI technology and experience. This includes improving accessibility, affordability, connectivity with both domestic and international payment networks, and interoperability.
“By enabling this technology, the country will gain sovereignty in the digital payments landscape and stand to benefit from enhanced payment interoperability and improved financial access for underserved populations,” Ritesh Shukla, CEO, NPCI International, said in a statement.
Moreover, NPCI said that this collaboration aims to improve digital financial services and support real-time Person-to-Person (P2P) and Merchant payment transactions (P2M) in the country.
This partnership will also allow BoN to gain access to best-in-class technology and insights from NIPL, enabling the creation of a similar platform in Namibia for the digital welfare of its citizens.
“This endeavour, aligned with the Bank’s Strategic Plan and NPS Vision and Strategy 2025, deliberately employs a central bank-led approach to minimize infrastructure costs for financial institutions, thereby ensuring the sustainability and affordability of instant payment solutions for end users,” said Johannes Gawaxab, Governor of the Bank of Namibia.
Once operational, the platform will enable digital transactions in Namibia, prompting financial inclusion and reducing cash dependency by catering to underserved populations.
Meanwhile, UN General Assembly President Dennis Francis asserted that India showcases how the digital revolution can be democratized to benefit millions, serving as a pivotal force for social transformation and advancement.
“Models like the Citizen Stack (of India) should be embraced and replicated across countries in the Global South – supporting and empowering people, particularly the most vulnerable in our communities, in the true spirit of leaving no one behind,” he said on Thursday.
Speaking at a conference on Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) hosted by India’s UN mission, he recalled his visit to India in January, when, he said, he saw the rapid expansion of digital public infrastructure that has removed many barriers and “enabled millions to achieve financial independence and prosperity”.
“In just seven years, India’s digital public infrastructure model has achieved over 80 per cent financial inclusion for its citizens, and now accounts for more than 60 per cent of all digital transactions worldwide,” he said.
At the conference, India showcased its Citizen Stack, the pioneering DPI, that provides seamless interoperability between various functions, from identity (for example, Aadhar) and payments (like UPI and Walmart’s PhonePe) to health (Sanjeevani) and public services delivery.
India’s Electronics Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in a video message said, “India believes in the ethos of ‘One World, One Family, One Future’ (and) consistent with our ethos, we offer our Citizen Stack to the world.”
“The G20 summit in New Delhi last year recognised the transformative power of DPI and following this, India took the initiative to establish a global repository for DPIs currently housing over 55 DPIs from 16 countries,” he said.
“India has pledged $200 million to a social impact fund that will accelerate DPI adoption globally, especially in the developing countries,” he added.
In the digital universe, India’s DPI is unique because unlike the commerce-driven systems predominating the West or the closed government-controlled model in China, India’s DPI provides an open digital infrastructure with guardrails that the private and public sectors can use.
India’s Permanent Representative Ruchira Kamboj said, “India’s journey offers powerful lessons for other nations embarking on digital transformations emphasising a design approach focused on shared building blocks to spur innovation across ecosystems.”
“We invite you to engage with us, let’s stack up the benefits worldwide, and help millions more,” she said, “achieve their dreams”.
To evangelise the DPI model, India’s UN Mission is holding one-on-one sessions on Friday for countries that are interested in adopting it.
Amitabh Kant, who was India’s Sherpa for the G20 Summit, said that India was offering a “modular open source identity platform” that can be adopted by any country’s needs.
“Do not replicate what India has done,” he said. “If you want to transform the lives of citizens like India, you can use the model based on your own country’s ethos in a manner so that you can transform the lives of your citizens.”
The US Federal Reserve, in its latest monetary policy meeting, voted to leave the key interest rate unchanged at 5.25-5.50 per cent…reports Asian Lite News
US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said a further interest rate hike from here is unlikely and the central bank is currently focused on its restrictive monetary policy stance.
“I think it’s unlikely that the next policy rate move will be a hike. I would say it’s unlikely. Our policy focus is on how long to keep the policy restrictive,” Powell told reporters at a post-monetary policy meeting press conference.
Asked what it would take to hike rates, in a hypothetical situation, Powell said, “We need to see persuasive evidence that our policy stance is not sufficiently restrictive to bring inflation down sustainably to 2 per cent.”
The US Federal Reserve, in its latest monetary policy meeting, voted to leave the key interest rate unchanged at 5.25-5.50 per cent, keeping the policy rate unchanged for the sixth straight time on the trot.
US Fed said it was prepared to maintain the current interest rate for “as long as appropriate” so as to align the inflation rate with its 2 per cent target.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the interest rates were near zero.
Raising interest rates is a monetary policy instrument that typically helps suppress demand in the economy, thereby helping the inflation rate decline.
“We have stated that we do not expect it will be appropriate to reduce the target range for the federal funds rate until we have gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent,” Powell said in his opening statement.
So far this year, Powell said the data has not given it that greater confidence.
“In particular, and as I noted earlier, readings on inflation have come in above expectations. It is likely that gaining such greater confidence will take longer than previously expected,” Powell added.
The US Fed Chair said that they know that reducing policy restraint too soon or too much could result in a reversal of the progress it has seen on the inflation front.
“At the same time, reducing policy restraint too late or too little could unduly weaken economic activity and employment,” he argued.
Consumer price inflation in the US continued to trend down, though it remained above 2 per cent, and it was a pain point for its central bank. In the 12 months through March, the inflation increased 3.5 per cent year-on-year, the highest in about 6 months. This followed a 3.2 per cent rise in February.
“Inflation has eased over the past year but remains elevated. In recent months, there has been a lack of further progress toward the Committee’s 2 percent inflation objective,” said the US central bank in its monetary policy statement.
US Fed seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at the rate of 2 per cent over the longer run.
It does not expect it will be appropriate to reduce the rate until it has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 per cent.
“The Committee is strongly committed to returning inflation to its 2 per cent objective,” US Fed said.
Recently, rating agency Moody’s said it believes an interest rate cut during the US Federal Reserve’s June meeting is likely off the table given stubborn inflation in the country. This assertion by the global rating agency then came soon after the US reported more than-expected inflation figures in March. (ANI)
Misra, who earlier worked at Meta-owned WhatsApp and caller identification app Truecaller, is the first employee of OpenAI in India….reports Asian Lite News
Sam Altman-run ChatGPT developer OpenAI is eager to contribute to India’s artificial intelligence (AI) mission by collaborating with developers, users and policymakers, Pragya Misra, the company’s Public Policy & Partnerships lead in the country, said on Wednesday.
Misra, who earlier worked at Meta-owned WhatsApp and caller identification app Truecaller, is the first employee of OpenAI in India.
“Excited to share that I’ve joined OpenAI as their first hire in India to lead Public Policy and Partnerships to advance OpenAI’s values of safety, transparency, and human-centric innovation,” she posted on X social media platform.
Misra said that OpenAI is eager to contribute to India’s AI mission “by collaborating with developers, users, academics, civil society, and policymakers to harness AI’s potential for societal benefit for Bharat”.
In March, the government approved the AI mission with an outlay of Rs 10,371.92 crore.
The mission will establish a comprehensive ecosystem catalysing AI innovation through strategic programmes and partnerships across the public and private sectors.
Misra earlier served as the Director of Public Affairs for Truecaller, where she collaborated closely with ministries, investors, key stakeholders, and media partners.
Prior to that, she worked for three years with Facebook (now Meta), and was the first employee for WhatsApp as well for India.
She also led WhatsApp’s campaign against misinformation in 2018 and has worked with Ernst & Young as well as the Royal Danish Embassy in Delhi. Misra received her MBA from the International Management Institute in 2012.
She also graduated in commerce from Delhi University and holds a Diploma in Bargaining and Negotiations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
She is also a podcaster and Instagram influencer with a follower base of 35,000.
She hosts the Pragyaan Podcast (@pragyaan_podcast), covering topics such as meditation and consciousness.
Emphasis was placed on a cluster-based approach to promote synergies in mineral extraction, refining, and end-use, particularly in low-carbon technologies….reports Asian Lite News
Invest India on Tuesday highlighted the huge business opportunity for critical mineral processing in the country to foreign investors with details of fiscal and non-fiscal incentives being offered to push growth in the sunrise sector.
On the second and concluding day of the critical minerals summit, leading mining states such as Odisha and Andhra Pradesh also shared incentives provided by them for industry, underlining the nation’s growth trajectory and state-level interventions to foster enabling infrastructure.
Emphasis was placed on a cluster-based approach to promote synergies in mineral extraction, refining, and end-use, particularly in low-carbon technologies.
The Narendra Modi government accelerated the exploration of critical minerals over the last two years as a result of which over 100 critical mineral blocks are now in the pipeline and will be put up for auction to mining companies.
Critical minerals such as lithium, chromium, nickel, graphite, cobalt, titanium, and rare earth elements are essential raw materials for sectors like electronics, electric vehicles, renewable energy, defence, and high-tech telecommunications.
Currently, the extraction of these minerals is dominated by a few countries such as China, which makes the supply chain vulnerable to geopolitical uncertainties.
The discussion at the summit on Tuesday underscored the importance of regulatory certainty, financing frameworks, and ESG standards to attract investors.
The panelists highlighted facilitation services offered by organisations like Invest India and the Industrial Promotion and Investment Corporation of Odisha (IPICOL), facilitating the establishment of processing and beneficiation capabilities in India.
The summit succeeded in bringing together a diverse array of Indian and international stakeholders, including industry leaders, startups, government officials, scientists, academics, and policy experts to help accelerate the domestic production of critical minerals to support India’s economic growth.
Veena Kumari Dermal, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Mines, in her closing remarks emphasised both domestic and international efforts to secure the critical mineral supply chain, enhance skill development in India and focus on critical minerals recycling.
Dermal also highlighted India’s available processing technologies for these minerals and referenced amendments to offshore mining regulations.
The summit served as a platform for transformative dialogue and collaboration, setting the stage for further conversations for short-listing the steps required to be taken for India’s emergence as a global leader in the critical mineral sector.
Madhya Pradesh, October 18 (ANI): Godrej Group Chairman Adi Godrej addressing the gathering at a "Magnificent MP Investors' Summit 2019" in Indore on Friday. (ANI Photo)
According to the company, Adi Godrej, who is head of the family and his brother Nadir Godrej, will retain control of the five listed companies of the Godrej Group….reports Asian Lite News
In the increasingly contentious world of family business splits, the peaceful division of the 127-year-old Godrej empire worth $5.7 billion is a rare occurrence.
According to the company, Adi Godrej, who is head of the family and his brother Nadir Godrej, will retain control of the five listed companies of the Godrej Group.
“Godrej was founded in 1897 to help build economic independence for India,” Nadir Godrej said.
“This deep purpose of innovating for a cause – the values of trust and respect and the belief in trusteeship and making communities that the companies operate in stronger and better – continue to form the bedrock of who we are 127 years later,” Nadir Godrej said.
According to a stock exchange filing, the cousins, Jamshyd and Smita, will receive the unlisted Godrej & Boyce Mfg. Co., along with its affiliates and a huge land bank.
Godrej Industries Ltd Chairman ADI GODREJ
Both the groups will continue to utilise the ‘Godrej’ brand and are “committed to growing and strengthening their shared heritage”.
The division of the conglomerate was agreed upon to honour the differing viewpoints within the family over business strategies, especially among the younger generation.
“There have been no apparent undercurrents despite the differences,” according to sources.
The Godrej Industries Group – which includes the listed entities Godrej Industries Ltd., Godrej Consumer Products Ltd., Godrej Properties Ltd., Godrej Agrovet Ltd., and Astec Lifesciences Ltd – will be led by Nadir Godrej as chairperson alongside his brother Adi and their immediate families.
The five listed companies are collectively valued at Rs 2.4 lakh crore.
Pirojsha Godrej, the son of Adi Godrej, has been appointed as the executive vice chairperson of the group.
He is scheduled to assume the role of chairperson from Nadir Godrej in August 2026.
Meanwhile, the Godrej Enterprises Group will be led by Jamshyd Godrej, who serves as chairperson and managing director, alongside Nyrika Holkar as the executive director, and their immediate families, as per the family settlement agreement.
The Godrej Enterprises Group comprises Godrej & Boyce, along with its associated companies that operate diverse businesses including appliances, aerospace, aviation, defence, energy, security, construction, healthcare, furniture, IT, and infrastructure.
The family will also retain land banks, including over 3,400 acres in Vikhroli, a suburb of Mumbai, which remain the family’s largest asset.
“With this forward-looking family agreement now in place, we can further drive our growth aspirations with fewer complexities and focus on leveraging our core strengths in high-tech engineering and design-led innovation across our strong portfolio of strategic, consumer, and emerging businesses,” said Jamshyd Godrej.
Today ‘efficiency’ is the hallmark of any successful business operation involving delivery on a global base and IT and AI make it possible to achieve it to the satisfaction of all stakeholders, writes D.C. Pathak
Efficiency is classically defined as the measure of productivity per unit of time and is therefore traditionally linked to the ‘work attitude’ of the employee, the quality of management that provides for a strong ‘supervision’, and the system of ‘performance evaluation’ that was expected to be free of personal bias or favouritism.
There has been a conceptual advancement in the understanding of these roots of efficiency.
The importance of workplace environment is now recognised in terms of not only the adequacy of physical ‘equipment’ provided to the employee but also the harmony and peace in the atmosphere that would add to the ease of maintaining a ‘work-life’ balance for the individual. This combination helped the employee to work with concentration — aided by freedom from mental distractions — and thus added to the output against time.
The concept of supervision has also changed from the perception of a senior breathing down one’s neck to a boss who nurtured the junior and made himself or herself available for providing guidance if sought by the latter.
The modern system of business ensures adequate ‘training on the job’ for the employee on one hand and encourages ‘participative management’ emerging out of the conviction that the entire hierarchy of the enterprise is wedded to the same organisational goals, on the other.
In ‘performance evaluation’ three things become crucially important. One is rooted in the mandate of the ‘age of information’ that one has to be a well-informed person to achieve success in any field. This is because only knowledge-based decision-making showed the right path.
In judging one’s performance, the boss should have complete knowledge of the subordinate — as an employee with a given work attitude, as a human being with emotional content and as a person who has burdens and responsibilities beyond the workplace.
An arid, output-related evaluation as per prescribed paradigms is to be tempered with the correct knowledge of the circumstances of the employee that might have caused an unexplained shortfall.
Secondly, the senior should have an astute ability to make out the difference between ‘brilliance’ and ‘diligence’ and give due importance to both — some people may look very bright and busy but produce very little at the end of the day. Last but not least, the boss with a reputation of being transparent and fair in evaluating the subordinates, retains his or her image as a leader — biases and favouritism in making evaluations destroy that image often without the leader even knowing it.
An important task of Human Resource development people in an enterprise today is to work out arrangements for up-skilling those who were not lacking in effort but who had the potential to enhance the output further through special training.
Cost-effectiveness is still not fully built into business operations since a generally prevalent notion is that investment has a direct line to growth and profitability — this substantially drove expenditure on sales promotion through attractive advertisements to cope up with a highly competitive world.
It is not adequately realised that practising cost-effectiveness — even when funds were available — is an instrument of profitability since it helps to keep up the given level of productivity with lesser use of resources — man, material or money. If an existing operation can be handled with three persons instead of four deployed at present or if a process is done in seven stages but could as well be completed in five steps, then the resource-saving option must be chosen.
The conceptual understanding involved here is that cost-effectiveness was in fact increasing the efficiency of the employees which is a fundamental reason why productivity would increase as mentioned in the beginning, in terms of ‘time’ taken by the employee.
Time in today’s competitive environment is now considered the new ‘resource’ besides the traditional assets of manpower, material resources and funds. If in practising cost-effectiveness, the investment-output ratio tilted in favour of the latter because of the lesser use of traditional resources, that was an additional gain. All of this shows that the awareness of ‘efficiency’ as the key to growth has acquired a new-found importance.
The advent of Information Technology introducing instant online communications and business transactions, has pushed competitiveness to a global level and provided early bird advantage to those who can press data analytics into use for getting a peep into what lay ahead in terms of both ‘opportunities’ and ‘risks’.
Artificial Intelligence is a new frontier of Information Technology that has opened up a huge requirement of skilled manpower, unfolded for all businesses new areas of growth and thrown up a debate on its adverse impact on employment.
It is however, becoming rapidly clear that AI would create new products and services and this would itself become a new industry and that most companies would have to enlarge their Human Resource base putting fears of retrenchment at rest. If there are layoffs in some companies this would be compensated for by the added requirement of skilled hands in many others. AI-aided data analytics is producing immense prospects of growth in the spheres of medical health, education, entertainment, pharmaceuticals and governance and establishing new benchmarks of ‘efficiency’ in running businesses in terms of productivity per unit of time. Like any technology to which people would have access, AI applications are getting into the hands of potential lawbreakers and producing new kinds of crime — financial frauds and misuse of ‘deep fakes’ are already in the news.
World powers including India are fortunately working together to check the perils of AI. This does not, however, detract from the promises that Artificial Intelligence is offering for the betterment of human life. The guiding principle in this is to remember that AI applications like any other computer-based activity, are subject to an input-output paradigm and that machine learning should be encouraged within the same thought that it would give the best results when in crucial moments of decision-making it worked in conjunction with human mind.
Artificial Intelligence has in a way pushed the frontiers of the ‘knowledge economy’. Data of the past combined with what is known in the present was never put to such an advantage for the betterment of the future of humanity earlier because only now has analytics surpassed the human capacity for collation and examination.
ChatGPT and its variants in conjunction with the Large Language Model (LLM) are extremely useful for education, particularly Law studies, work requiring content and design generation and research. All this is subject to the generic advice that any material on the internet should not be presumed to be factually correct and wherever absolute accuracy of facts was to be ensured, it is advisable to get confirmation through other sources.
A great demand put on the leadership of businesses and organisations is that they themselves had to learn to wield this powerful instrument of growth and at least had to have the ability to assemble a team of top professionals around them to handle the AI applications to their advantage.
Today ‘efficiency’ is the hallmark of any successful business operation involving delivery on a global base and IT and AI make it possible to achieve it to the satisfaction of all stakeholders.
Assessment of moves of the rivals, the study of the market conditions including customer demand and drawing up of a fool-proof business plan are all based on analytics involving a billion data and businesses did not have this advantage earlier.
The world should take delight in the advancement that a technology combining ‘knowledge’ and ‘efficiency’ has brought about and continue to explore the marvels that the human mind aided by machines could produce in this regard.
(The writer is a former Director of the Intelligence Bureau. Views are personal)
