While Ola may be trailing in the AI model race, it has managed to shake things up by offering a massive discount on the Chinese AI model DeepSeek. Ola Krutrim- part of the Ola group led by Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal, has now made DeepSeek’s R1-671B model available on its platform at an introductory rate of just Rs. 1 per million tokens. This marks a dramatic reduction from DeepSeek’s original pricing of Rs. 12 per million tokens, giving developers an unprecedented cost advantage.

Expanding AI Offerings

Previously, Ola Krutrim had introduced smaller versions of DeepSeek’s models on its platform, such as the DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B, DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B, DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B, DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B, and DeepSeek R1. These models were priced between Rs. 40 and Rs. 60 per million tokens. Now, Krutrim has taken a significant step forward by making DeepSeek’s most advanced and largest model, the R1-671B, available to users.

While we in India should be cautious with the DeepSeek app, we can totally make use of the open source model namesake, if securely deployed on Indian servers, to leapfrog our own AI progress. @Krutrim has deployed DeepSeek-R1 671B on H100s - first time anywhere in the world.… pic.twitter.com/jB9f21IiBC

— Bhavish Aggarwal (@bhash) February 11, 2025

Ola Krutrim’s AI Development Efforts

Ola Krutrim has also been working on its own AI models over the past year, but the results have been less than impressive. The models developed by Krutrim have only been comparable to smaller distilled models from Mistral, dating back to July last year. These models have lagged behind leading AI research from the US and China. However, Krutrim has announced an ambitious investment plan, committing Rs. 2,000 crore this year and an additional Rs. 10,000 crore by next year to improve its AI capabilities.

Benefits of Hosting DeepSeek’s Model

Despite India’s current lag in AI model development, Ola’s move to deploy DeepSeek’s open-source model offers several advantages. One significant benefit is data sovereignty—developers using the model can send their data to an Indian company instead of a Chinese entity. Additionally, Ola has the flexibility to modify the model, eliminating certain built-in restrictions, such as DeepSeek’s failure to recognize Arunachal Pradesh as part of India. Similar to how Perplexity bypasses certain model limitations, Krutrim can tailor the AI to better align with local interests.

India’s Role in the AI Landscape

Although India is still far from leading the AI revolution, hosting open-source models and offering aggressive pricing can help the country carve out a niche in the industry. By providing developers with cost-effective AI solutions, Ola Krutrim is positioning itself as an enabler in India’s AI ecosystem, potentially influencing the trajectory of AI development in the region.

With its strategic pricing and commitment to AI investment, Ola Krutrim is making a bold statement—while it may not yet be a frontrunner in AI innovation, it is determined to play a crucial role in shaping India’s AI future.