Ola's AI smart assistant 'Kruti' goes dark across app platforms

Kruti, Ola Krutrim's AI assistant, is unavailable for users across Apple and Google app stores and also through the web, ET has learnt.

The app, which was integrated with ride-sharing platform Ola, is no longer accessible there as well. ET has verified this through these platforms.

It could not be immediately ascertained whether the disruption is temporary.


An email query sent to Krutrim remained unanswered till as of press time.

While ‘Kruti’ was not accessible via its direct website, kruti.ai, which showed a “site not found” error, users accessing it through Olakrutrim.com/kruti saw a message stating the site was under maintenance and would be back shortly.

The development follows employees being laid off in the company’s linguistics team--hired to train its AI model--last year amid the exit of key executives and lack of funding.

Krutrim had launched the application last year with much fanfare. With agentic AI capabilities, it was seen as founder Bhavish Aggarwal’s answer to global rivals such as ChatGPT.

In the run up to Kruti's launch in June, Aggarwal, in a post on X, had said, “Krutrim team is working crazy hard to make this a great product as good as global apps and better for Indian context!”

Kruti was based on its AI model, Krutrim V2, a 12 billion parameter model. Navendu A, senior vice president and head of business at Krutrim, had told ET on the sidelines of the launch last year that the company was working on a multibillion parameter model, Krutrim 3, where it will use a mixture of own and IndiaAI GPU clusters for training.

However, multiple people told ET that Krutrim 3’s development, too, has been stalled.

In June, Kruti was launched as a consumer agentic AI platform that can process text, voice and images, and was integrated with Ola’s ecosystem, where consumers can book cabs, order food and pay bills.

The plan was to expand to other applications as well, as part of Aggarwal’s aim of creating a full stack AI platform, including large language models, semiconductor, cloud and agentic AI under Krutrim.

Krutrim was launched in 2023. It gained unicorn status the following year after raising $50 million. Since the launch of its products, including its large language model and cloud, it has seen few takers due to poor documentation and lack of adequate technical maturity, ET had reported last year, citing several developers and startup founders.

The company’s fund raising has not progressed, with its model and chip development units left with a handful of people.