When Bhavish Aggarwal unveiled Krutrim in 2023, the pitch was audacious: build India’s own artificial intelligence stack, from foundational models and semiconductor chips to a homegrown cloud, at a time when the global AI race was accelerating at breakneck speed.
Less than two years later, that ambition is running into reality.
Krutrim, Aggarwal’s AI venture, has pushed back R&D timelines across multiple projects and is facing uncertainty around product launches, according to current and former employees. A wave of senior exits, shelved plans, and internal management challenges has raised questions about whether the company moved too fast, without aligning resources, talent, and expectations.
Big ambitions, limited room for error
Krutrim rode the AI boom and quickly became the country’s first AI unicorn. The company laid out plans to build large language models from scratch, design semiconductor chips, and create an Indian alternative to global cloud providers, all simultaneously.
But several former executives say those ambitions soon began to outpace execution. Current and ex-employees told businessline that teams were given aggressive timelines to deliver deep-tech products without clear direction or adequate support.
A former senior engineering leader at Krutrim, who has previously worked at Intel, spoke to businessline on condition of anonymity, said several internal projects have either been deprioritised or quietly shelved.
“A part of the work I did was on the consumer AI app Kruti, which has now taken a backseat.” the former executive said. “We were never even in the race, as the resources required, either in computing or the quality of talent, were not made available. Work pressure was extreme. When you are building something entirely new, things sometimes don’t go to plan.”
The former executive also pointed to leadership and cultural issues within the organisation. “During occasional review meetings with top leaders, Bhavish would sometimes be two or even three hours late. Never would he express contrition for making senior talent wait inordinately,” the person said. “Technical talent, especially when you’re trying to build something from the ground up, doesn’t work that way.”
Other former employees echoed similar concerns, saying teams were assigned near-impossible R&D timelines with little operational or managerial support.
“Krutrim doesn’t have the compute power or the people to train large models,” said one former employee. “With chip plans shelved and AI models beyond reach, only the cloud division remains, and even that is being propped up by Ola.”
A number of senior executives have exited Krutrim over the past year, including Vipul Shah (formerly of Cisco), Gautam Bhargava (ex-Rippling, ex-Amazon), Samrat Sahu, Achal Kumar Mall, and Mikhil Raj, among others.
Why the starting point matters
Jaspreet Bindra, Co-founder, AI&Beyond says Krutrim’s challenges also stem from a deeper structural issue, its lack of a strong, AI-native core business to build upon.
“Companies like Nvidia or even X are built on strong, cash-generating core businesses with deep technical expertise and sustained R&D capabilities. Nvidia, for instance, has decades of experience in semiconductors, which naturally extended into software and AI. Similarly, Tesla had already built advanced AI systems for its own operations, making the move into Grok far more organic.”
Ola, by contrast, comes from ride-hailing and electric vehicles, businesses that have limited linkage to core AI development,” Bindra said. “Neither provides a strong technical or data foundation for building foundational AI models. As a result, Krutrim represents a third, entirely new vertical, stretching the organisation thin. That overextension is likely one of the reasons several initiatives have struggled to take off.”
Ambitions outpaced execution
Krutrim had outlined plans to design semiconductor chips, build an indigenous cloud platform, and develop foundational AI models. Aggarwal had also acquired Bodhi, a startup founded by Intel veterans focused on chip design.
However, multiple former employees said attempting to build compute infrastructure, chips, and models in parallel proved impossible to sustain.
The chip team has since been disbanded, with only a handful of engineers retained alongside Bodhi co-founder Sambit Sahu. AI head Chandra Khatri is also set to exit, according to sources.
An ex-employee summed up Krutrim’s core challenge as a mismatch between ambition and execution.“ CEOs are ambitious and high on energy. Founders and board members often want outcomes delivered as quickly as possible,” the person said. “But execution takes time. In this case, there was a collective failure of leadership below Bhavish, including Bhavish himself. As CEO, he naturally exerted pressure, especially given the need to compete with players like OpenAI and Anthropic.”
According to the executive, either leadership teams failed to clearly communicate the time and resources required, or the communication framework itself was flawed, or the CEO was not receptive. “Importantly, neither of Aggarwal’s previous ventures involved deep technical delivery,” the person said. “After building a factory in six months, he attempted to replicate the same pace with Krutrim.”
The executive also pointed to a fundamental misalignment in scale.
“There was a misreading of growth targets when compared to players like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind,” the person said. “These companies can deploy 100-person teams or spend over $1 billion on a single model. Even with capital, building foundational technology takes time.”
To put this in perspective, OpenAI has raised $57.9 billion in equity funding, while Anthropic has raised $27.3 billion so far, according to Tracxn.
“A company can grow fast,” the former employee said. “But speed must be balanced with rigorous research. In Krutrim’s case, the push for speed ended up hampering research.”
Ola’s Krutrim’s Cap table
Krutrim has raised $74.9 million in external capital to date, primarily from Z47 (formerly Matrix Partners). Z47 invested approximately $23.8 million in a Series A round in July 2023 and about $50 million in a Series B round in January 2024, valuing the company at $1.04 billion, according to Tracxn. The Sarin Family India invested $1 million in February 2024, while Jitendra Vaidya invested $99,600 in an angel round in April 2024.
In early 2025, Aggarwal has also committed an initial investment of ₹2,000 crore, with a larger commitment of ₹10,000 crore by 2026. The funding will be used to establish the AI lab and develop advanced AI models tailored for Indian users.
Sources close to the company said Krutrim’s cloud business is already cash-positive and does not require external funding. Aggarwal has previously pledged shares to seed Krutrim and, through a recent one-time, limited monetisation of his personal stake in Ola Electric, has fully released all 3.93% of pledged shares.
businesslinehad shared a detailed questionnaire with Krutrim, which did not elicit a response at the time of publishing.
On December 19, 2025, Ola Electric said Aggarwal sold a 3.93% stake from his personal shareholding to repay a promoter-level loan of about ₹260 crore. Promoters held a 36.78% stake in Ola Electric at the time.
To secure the loan, Aggarwal had pledged a portion of his Ola Electric shares with lenders including Axis Trustee and Aditya Birla.
As of August 2025, Krutrim had 549 employees. The company reported revenue of ₹3.1 crore and a net loss of ₹2.8 crore in FY24, as per Tracxn data.
Published on December 22, 2025
