One quick thing: Cabinet approves Rs 1,000 cr VC fund for space startups 

In today’s newsletter: 

• Mukesh Ambani on AI's Jio moment
• Is NPCI playing fair with BHIM push?
• Captain Fresh selects bankers for $400M IPO

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“You sound like a 28-year-old engineer,” quipped Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, reacting to the bold AI vision of 67-year-old Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, who was behind India’s telecom revolution.

At the Nvidia AI Summit in Mumbai, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang came together to discuss the hottest topic of the day: AI. 

• Ambani proposed a new goal for India: making AI affordable and accessible to every Indian, just like he did with Jio
  
  
• To achieve this, Reliance Industries and Nvidia will partner to build AI infrastructure 

Huang said that Nvidia is reducing the cost of using generative AI models by half or at least by a third each year with its newest graphic processing units (GPUs).

• Huang announced that Nvidia's Blackwell chips will be available for shipping from the fourth quarter

Also read: My version of NVIDIA is 'Vidya', Mukesh Ambani tells CEO Jensen Huang

Ambani praised Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for open-sourcing its large language model (LLM) Llama, saying it ensures a fair and competitive AI landscape.

• He said that in the future, open-sourcing AI models will become the norm, leading to the development of many advanced AI applications.

Nvidia is ramping up its commitment to AI in India, announcing strategic partnerships with Indian IT firms, and other companies.

Huang emphasised the company's mission to harness India's IT prowess to develop advanced AI solutions for businesses.

“Our job is to help India build and deploy AI, and your job is to take… (India’s) incredible IT capability so that we can create agents and help every single company,” Huang said.

More from our Nvidia AI Summit coverage:

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says Hindi is the most challenging language for LLM development
  
  
• Nvidia has over 10,000 engineers in India
  
  
• ‘Was surprised’: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang remembers first meeting with PM Modi
  
  
• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang declares his favourite Indian food is chicken biryani

Startup founders often joke that NPCI is far ahead of them in innovating for UPI. 

• However, this innovative edge is drawing criticism from banks and third-party UPI apps (TPAPs)

NPCI’s recent decision to spin off the BHIM app as a separate subsidiary to foster competition in the UPI space, currently monopolised by PhonePe and Google Pay, has raised some concerns.

“There is a major conflict of interest. Large TPAPs have to integrate with multiple PSP (Payment Service Provider) banks which is expensive and slows us down. But BHIM is its own PSP,” founder of a UPI app told us.

Banks and TPAPs argue that this creates a conflict of interest as the NPCI is both the regulator and a competitor in the UPI ecosystem.

Critics argue that NPCI generates revenue from UPI while using that revenue to support BHIM, potentially undercutting banks and other players in the space.

• NPCI is investing Rs 300 crore in BHIM this fiscal to regain market share and attract users

NPCI Chief Dilip Asbe insists that BHIM is a government-backed app, and its success should benefit all stakeholders.

"BHIM is the country's own app and the prime minister launched it. I think it would be totally incorrect to look at BHIM along the lines of other commercial apps,” Asbe told us in an interview.

While NPCI's has ambitious plans, BHIM's market share has dwindled significantly, dropping from 0.6% to a mere 0.2% over the past couple of years.

Find out more

Seafood company Captain Fresh is making silent but big moves by staying under the radar.

The B2B startup has picked Axis Capital and BofA for its IPO, sources told us. 

• Another 1-2 bankers will be part of the IPO syndicate as discussions are still underway
  

The company plans to file its draft papers in the first half of 2025 and list later in the year

The startup plans to raise $350-400 million and about half of that will be a fresh issue of shares. The remaining will be the offer-for-sale component.

• It’s targeting a valuation of $1.3-1.5 billion

The increased valuation is on the back of an improved profit profile and an increase in the overall scale of the business. 

The company is also negotiating a pre-IPO fundraise, we were told. 

• Captain Fresh is in the advanced stages of raising $50-60 million in a round led by existing investor, Accel
  
  
• Other existing backers like Tiger Global, British International Investment (BII) and Prosus will also participate to hold on to their stake in the company
  
  
• The company is being valued at around $800 million in the ongoing talks, , up from $500 million last year

The pre-IPO round will however be done in multiple tranches. 

• While it will raise $50-60 million now, there will be more rounds wherein Captain Fresh will ready a cash chest ahead of its public market debut
  

Dig deeper

• Hugging Face, alongside Amazon, Google, and others, is releasing a new open-source software to reduce costs associated with building chatbots and other AI systems.
  
  
• AI will play a pivotal role in transforming the energy sector, said Hardeep Singh Puri, the Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

Have you ever wondered what your pet cat or dog might be saying? 

Well, thanks to a team of European scientists, we're one step closer to understanding the language of animals. 

• The team of scientists have developed an AI algorithm capable of interpreting pig sounds!

By analysing grunts, oinks, and squeals, the algorithm can detect positive or negative emotions in pigs. Find out more

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