Bhavish Aggarwal pledges 1.1% stake in Ola Electric to support AI firm Krutrim's expansion

Bhavish Aggarwal, Founder and promoter Ola Electric

Bhavish Aggarwal, founder, and promoter of Ola Electric Mobility Limited, has pledged 1.1 percent of the company's equity share capital, valued at nearly Rs 452 crore of stake based on current market capitalization, to support and expand his Artificial Intelligence (AI) venture, Krutrim, by facilitating funds through debentures.

The firm informed the exchanges on December 2 ,"The Promoter has signed a non-disposal undertaking executed between the Promoter, Axis Trustee Services Limited and Krutrim Data Centre Private Limited dated 23 November 2024 to provide comfort in relation to certain debentures being issued by the Borrower".

"Upon the expiry of the lock-in over the Promoter Shares, the Promoter will create a pledge over a portion of the Promoter Shares and make relevant disclosures in accordance with applicable laws," the statement on BSE said.

To be sure, in January, Krutrim was valued at $1 billion after it raised  $50 million in funding led by Matrix Partners India, an early backer of Aggarwal's other ventures Ola Cabs and the IPO-bound Ola Electric.

Krutrim, which means "artificial" in Sanskrit, aims to focus on building the entire AI computing stack. In December 2023, the company unveiled its first family of multilingual large language models (LLM), also called Krutrim.

Trained by a team of computer scientists, based in Bengaluru and San Francisco, the large language model will be available in two different sizes: a base model named Krutrim base, and a larger, more complex  model called Krutrim Pro.

Krutrim has recently launched a standalone Android app for its eponymous AI chatbot that intends to take on rivals such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Microsoft's Copilot