Hello,
The first-ever DevSparks 2024 concluded with a bang!
On Saturday, YourStory hosted its first-ever developers’ conference, serving as a platform for developers to showcase their latest innovations to potential employers and investors.
From Ola Founder Bhavish Aggarwal to Juspay Founder Vimal Kumar—the who’s who of India’s tech ecosystem graced the event to share their insightful ideas.
At the event, Aggarwal and his team unveiled new products built on the Krutrim AI stack, including an Android app, showcasing the advancements in the field of Indian AI.
Also, meet the winners of YourStory Gen AI Buildathon 2024, organised in association with 100x Engineers.
If you missed the event, we have got you covered. Check out our full coverage here.
In other news, Bhavesh Gupta, the President and Chief Operating Officer of One97 Communications, the parent company of Paytm, has resigned from his position, along with Varun Sridhar, the Chief of subsidiary Paytm Services Pvt Ltd.
ICYMI: The reason behind rising fast food prices.
Lastly, catch the Shaolin monks of China in acrobatic action!
In today’s newsletter, we will talk about
- Bhavish Aggarwal on India leading the future of technology
- The role of digital public infrastructure
- AI’s impact to surpass that of Industrial Revolution
Here’s your trivia for today: What is Koumpounophobia?
DevSparks
Bhavish Aggarwal on India leading future of technology
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a once-in-a-multi-generation opportunity for India to take the lead in the world of computing, said Ola Founder Bhavish Aggarwal.
“If we, as a country, want to become the biggest economy in the world, we have to become the best in the 4-5 tech paradigms—such as AI, data centres, cloud infrastructure, semiconductors—of the future,” said Aggarwal, Founder of Ola and Krutrim, speaking at YourStory’s DevSparks 2024.
World of AI:
- The serial entrepreneur said that with AI, anyone can become a developer, and the number of Indian developers is likely to exceed 200 million over the next couple of years.
- Krutrim SI Designs formally launched the Krutrim AI chatbot for Android at the DevSparks event, with the iOS version coming soon. The app has been developed by Krutrim, Sanskrit for ‘artificial’, the unicorn AI startup launched last year.
- Aggarwal also joined issue with OpenAI Founder Sam Altman for his statement that Indian companies can’t build products like ChatGPT, and said that his AI startup Krutrim would show how it’s done.
DevSparks
The role of digital public infrastructure
Digital public infrastructure must be built to create population-scale systems, and India has shown to the rest of the world that we can continue to build digital open infrastructure on top of which private innovation can thrive, said Pramod Varma, Co-founder, FIDE and Chief Architect, Aadhaar and India Stack, at DevSparks 2024.
Varma pointed out that while UPI is open, innovation is done by private entities like PhonePe and Paytm. Similarly, ONDC is an open protocol, yet innovation remains private.
Key takeaways:
- Citing an example of digital payments growth, he emphasised that India has surged to processing 500 million digital payments, thanks to UPI—a significant leap from less than 50 million in 2016.
- If costs aren’t reduced, entrepreneurs will settle for serving the top portion of India—around 50 to 80 million people—while the majority of the population remains in the informal economy.
- Varma, the CTO at EkStep, added that computing and high energy consumption are creating a warm climate, which has led to sustainable practices, and we are looking to create micro data centres towards cooler computing.
DevSparks
AI’s impact to surpass that of Industrial Revolution
The surge in productivity due to advances in AI will lead to the biggest changes in modern history since the Industrial Revolution and result in massive wealth creation, said Surojit Chatterjee, CEO and Co-founder of Ema.
“We are at the cusp of the biggest change the modern history has ever seen since the industrial revolution,” said Chatterjee, who was addressing a packed audience at DevSparks 2024.
Revolutionary:
- Chatterjee emphasised that AI, particularly Gen AI, is the biggest transformation in modern history and will see a much bigger impact.
- Shedding light on the opportunities ahead for enterprises, he said, “Today, most enterprises are inefficient, and most of them have not used any level of automation.”
- Emerging from stealth mode in April this year, Ema launched Universal AI Employee, which is capable of performing complex tasks across various domains.
News & updates
- Long time: Warren Buffett took the stage at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting on Saturday, paying tribute to his business partner Charlie Munger who died last year and outlining Berkshire’s goal to grow earnings. Berkshire has also sold 13% of its Apple shares in the first quarter, ending with about 790 million shares.
- Features: X is now using Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok to power a feature that summarises personalised trending stories in the app’s Explore section. According to an announcement, X’s Premium subscribers can read a summary of posts on X associated with each trending story featured on the For You tab in Explore.
- Launch: After years of delays and stumbles, Boeing is poised to launch astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA. It’s the first flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule with a crew on board, a pair of NASA pilots, who will check the spacecraft during the test drive and a weeklong stay at the space station.
What is Koumpounophobia?
Answer: The fear of buttons.
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