The ‘next big thing’ in the startup sector is predicted to be Generative Artificial Intelligence, or GenAI, the buzziest of buzzwords. The National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), which represents the technology industry in India, is establishing a GenAI foundry to assist startups in this market in producing profitable products to capitalize on this new technological wave. Later this month, Nasscom’s GenAI foundry is anticipated to debut. The industry group thinks that Indian GenAI startups need help on many different levels to have a significant impact. Ankit Bose, Head of AI at Nasscom, tells YourStory, “We are looking at how we can help these GenAI startups take their product from one stage to the next level and we will be providing them with a lot of support.”
In the period between 2021 and May 2023, Indian GenAI businesses raised about $475 million in funding, according to Nasscom’s report, “Generative AI – Startup Landscape in India.” There are over 60 such startups in India. For instance, NeuralGarage offers a solution that uses GenAI technology to synchronize lip movement with audio, and Tarisa offers tools that make it simple for financial institutions to create credit profiles of debtors. A new GenAI company. CodeMate takes advantage of the technologies to speed up programming.
The survey also identified a 1.5X increase in GenAI companies in India between 2021 and 2023 and a 12X increase in investment year over year in 2022. Industry sources claim that there is still space for expansion. “Being a nascent technology, big-ticket investments, particularly in native Indian foundational models and enterprise-grade applications services, are yet to happen,” says Sangeeta Gupta, Senior Vice-President and Chief of Strategy at Nasscom. In addition to having limited funding, she continues, Generative AI businesses in India also struggle with a dearth of high-quality, usable training datasets and a shortage of high-performance computing power. According to Bose, the underlying technologies in what is known as the large language model (LLM) are the third pillar upon which GenAI’s success is based.
Chip manufacturers, who offer the necessary computing capacity, cloud technology providers, or hyperscalers, and finally, hyperscalers, are the other two pillars. None of these markets have a major presence in India. The Nasscom official said, “The country’s strength, however, lies in its vast talent pool and entrepreneurial energy.” Rahul Chowdhri, co-founder of Stellaris Venture Partners, said in a previous interview with YourStory that while there aren’t many entrepreneurs in the nation developing fundamental technology models, there are businesses developing solutions or services based on available platforms. Many of the firms in Stellaris’ current portfolio, including Whatfix, LimeChat, and GTM Buddy, are using GenAI platforms.
According to Bose, Nasscom has a partnership with government organizations like the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) that would give selected companies free graphic processing unit (GPU) power for six months as part of its aim to establish GenAI foundry. Any GenAI solution relies on GPUs since they offer the enormous computing power necessary to carry out these processes. Additional resources including data, access to the venture capital community, and partnerships with major global technology firms like AWS and Microsoft will also be made available through GenAI Foundry. Global market access is crucial for Indian GenAI startups, and we are working with big businesses to support them in this regard, according to Bose.
The Nasscom team has identified over 100 GenAI startups in India and is considering choosing 20 of these businesses to participate in its GenAI foundry project. He continues, “There are a lot of these businesses doing deep work in a variety of use cases, and this number is expanding fast. Business involvement The capacity of Indian GenAI firms to collaborate with multinational technological businesses, which have a significant client base and access to the global market, will likely determine whether or not they achieve long-term success. Bose asserts that if GenAI startups can address the issue for India, they can do so for any country on the planet. For the GenAI startups in India, things are coming together, and the ecosystem is gradually changing. The central government has also demonstrated its support for GenAI startups by announcing a proposed deep tech startup policy earlier this month. This policy, which is currently available for public comment, aims to create a full ecosystem for deep tech entrepreneurs that includes the government, businesses, venture capitalists, and academics.
To have an impact, GenAI entrepreneurs in India will need to focus on five important areas, according to Bose: build strong teams, offer enterprise-grade products, have a go-to-market strategy, and make use of various government initiatives. Startups also safely use Gen AI at the same time. Nasscom has already published recommendations for the appropriate use of AI, where the key focus is the ethical use of such technology. These regulations were made public in June 2023. According to Bose, “If we (GenAI startups) have to advance and present to the world, it has to have a responsible technology angle.”
