Top Founders of Indian Startups met Openai CEO Sam Altman on Wednesday, demanding Openai’s models to be affordable for developers and implement India-focused pricing.
Altman, appreciating the rapidly growing impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in India, described it as an important market for new technical innovation.
Altman was accompanied by Openai Chief Product Officer Kevin Veal and Vice President of Engineering Srinivas Narayanan. He held meetings with selected startup founders, venture capitalists, developers and students associated with Artificial Intelligence.
These meetings included in the leading Indian startup leaders, Alok Bajpai, Group CEO of Ixigo, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, CEO of Paytm, Kunal Bahl, a co-founder of Snapdeal (Snapdeal) co-founder Kunal Bahl, Chayos (Chayos) co-founder Raghv Verma , Gaurav Munjal, CEO of Unacademy and Akrit Vaish, CEO of Haptik.
Apart from this, Peak XV managing director Ranjan Anandan and filmmaker Shekhar Kapoor were also present in these meetings.
A startup founder said, “Large companies like Google and Microsoft set different prices for India. Openai should also think in this direction because their global pricing does not sit right according to India. ”
These meetings were laid to discuss the problems of Indian users, Openai’s APIs, and their prices especially to discuss their prices.
Snapdeal co-founder Kunal Bahl wrote on X (first Twitter), “Openai admitted that his pricing is still more and prices would have to be reduced considerably to adopt it on a large scale. It is expected to update on this. ”
Openai admitted that India is their second largest market and needs to increase support in Indian languages. He showed that every new model has improved and has also got better results in languages like Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Punjabi and Malayalam.
Openai’s leadership team held a meeting with Indian Startup Founders and Developers on Wednesday, where Openai’s technology was used openly and on its challenges. ixigo’s group CEO Alok Bajpai told Business Standard, “This was an engag meeting, where we discussed how Openai Technology is being used in India and what problems we are facing. The team showed deep interest in understanding our expectations and also shared their short-term plans. ”
Another startup founder, who was involved in the meeting, said on the condition of anonymity that Openai’s team was also open to discuss API pricing more accessible for India.
A third person present at the meeting said, “We spoke on users and applications who are using Openai products. This was a very engaging discussion. ”
Openai’s team also informed the developers and startups that their models have been very improved in Indian languages like Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Punjabi and Malayalam.
According to a startup founder, during the conversation, there was also a discussion of open-source of Openai models in future, although not much information was given on it.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm said, “It is more important than just making open-source, what is the model’s USP (unique selling point), price point and its compute capacity. The question in India is no longer whether you can make models or not, but whether you can make such a model for one billion people. ”