Voice Payments in Local Language Bridge an eDivide
Imagine having to press keys on your mobile 52 times to make a bank transaction. For the 300 million people in India who do not have a smartphone, to transfer money using Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS), this is a reality if not for AI4Bharat’s work with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to ease this process and make banking seamless in Indian languages. This technology is expected to significantly help feature phone users get the benefit of digital railroads such as Unified Payments Corporation (UPI). The NPCI, the platform for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India is working with AI4Bharat, an open-source language artificial intelligence (AI) centre based at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, to facilitate voice-based merchant payments as well as peer-to-peer transactions in local languages. It is learnt that the language models will be provided by AI4Bharat. Currently, smartphone users can scan a QR code and send money. But those who use a feature phone only have the option of using the IVRS which is time taking and cumbersome. This technology will significantly help feature phone users get the benefit of innovations such as UPI. Across India, people speak in different ways. AI4Bharat is working on the NIPL and is responsible for formulating business strategy, leading business development and driving profitability by deploying NPCI’s technology and solutions in international markets. technical component which can recognise a voice in an Indian language and identify entities.. The global voice-based payments market size was valued at $5.89 billion in 2021 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 10.9% from 2022 to 2030.
Traditional AI deployment of 70% companies has failed
Sylvain Duranton & Nipun Kalra of BCG X, in an interview say the implementation of generative AI within enterprises is not just about tech and tools but 70% of it is about people too. Excerpts: India is among the top three countries where people are optimistic about AI and Generative AI (GAI). India is among the bottom three when it comes to concerns and challenges regarding deployment of AI and GAI. I think this will be an asset for India, which can have a good run. There has been a good migration to cloud and companies should focus on this. That said, AI and GAI are beyond providing just efficiencies in data management, etc. It is about the transformation of business operations. Hence deploying AI is challenging. But it will take longer than what most companies think. Many people think Chat GPT is very easy to deploy, and there is hardly any engineering. That is a myth. If you want to deploy this at scale in companies, you need full engineering muscles. Almost 70% of the companies have failed when we look at traditional AI deployment. It has tech challenges … companies have to build new tech and also bring it into the legacy systems. From a traditional AI perspective 70% have not made money. AI-led cases have been piecemeal. GAI is very data-hungry and that is a journey. We met 45 CEOs in India recently, and one refrain is how the employee base can be productive. They are looking at small cases. Getting the tech right or data correct is just 20% of GAI; 70% is about how people will be adopting this. It is not that jobs have gone; they have to be done differently. Many people think GAI is only about buying tech and deploying it. No, it’s about transforming what people do. Worldwide 36% of workers think that AI will take their jobs. That number in India is 50%. We know that 30% of companies succeed with traditional AI. A maximum of 30% will also succeed with GAI.
Google adding more local languages to fuel Android’s growth in India
Google is adding more Indian languages to its services and seeking ways to make its Android smartphones cheaper, eager to win more users in the world’s most populous country. The Alphabet Inc. unit is enabling more users in India to access its services with their local language, by either writing or using their voice, Sanjay Gupta, head of Google India, said. The company has been developing an artificial intelligence model that would be able to handle more than 100 Indian languages across speech and text, a drive that would widen internet access beyond the country’s urban English-speaking minority. Google has made efforts to solidify its position in mass-market phones, launching affordable devices such as those through its partnership with billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio.
WhatsApp Unveils ‘Channels’ Feature to Facilitate Broadcasts
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch of WhatsApp Channels which the company termed a ‘simple, reliable, and private way’ to receive important updates from people and organizations, within WhatsApp. Meta said channels is a one-way broadcast tool for admins to send text, photos, videos, stickers, and polls. It is being built in a new tab called Updates — where a user will find status and channels they choose to follow— separate from a user’s chats with family, friends, and communities.
Zomato Starts Experimenting with GenAI
Zomato has started experimenting with generative artificial intelligence (AI), joining the growing list of companies rushing to smoothen customer experience with products based on the new technology. The company, which also owns the quick commerce platform Blinkit, is also planning to hire engineers for machine learning, data science, and natural language processing roles to build AI-based products, one of the sources said. Zomato has appointed a head of AI product development to drive these efforts. The team will be looking to integrate AI into various customer interfacing features such as search and notifications, in addition to backend tools such as product photography, customer support, etc. These tools will be built for both Zomato and Blinkit. A large part of customer communications within the app are already automated…but the integration with generative AI will be able to handle the increasing loads more efficiently and effectively.
Insta Testing AI Chatbot with App
Instagram is reportedly testing a feature that would let users chat with AI within the app. Leaker Alessandro Paluzzi in a tweet shared the development, claiming that the platform has an AI agent in the pipeline. According to screenshots he shared, chatbot will be able to answer questions and provide advice. Users could have 30 personalities to choose from.
India’s Internet Economy Set To Skyrocket: USD 1 Trillion Growth By 2030, Says Report
India’s internet economy is expected to register six-fold growth and touch USD 1 trillion by 2030, mainly driven by the e-commerce vertical, a joint report released by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company said. The report estimates that India’s internet-economy was in the range of USD 155-175 billion in 2022. According to the report, the growth will be led by the B2C e-commerce segment, followed by B2B e-commerce, software-as-a-service providers and online media led by over-the-top players. “India’s internet economy is expected to grow 6 x to USD 1 trillion by 2030,” Google India, Country Manager & Vice President, Sanjay Gupta said while sharing details of the report. He said most of the purchases in future will take place digitally. Gupta said while startups have led the path on digital innovation, SMEs and large enterprises after the pandemic have started to use digital technologies to become more competitive. According to the report, B2C e-commerce is expected to grow 5-6 times to USD 350-380 billion by 2030, from around USD 60-65 billion in 2022. The report estimates B2B e-commerce to grow 13-14 times to USD 105-120 billion, from around USD 8-9 billion in 2022. The software-as-a-service segment is expected to grow 5-6 times to USD 65-75 billion by 2030, from USD 12-13 billion in 2022. Temasek, Managing Director (Investments), Vishesh Shrivastav said India is now a new hope for the growth of global GDP.
Bing Image Creator for All Chats Now
Microsoft has announced that the Bing Image Creator integrated into AI-powered Bing Chat is now supported in all chat modes. In March, the company introduced Bing Image Creator to the new Bing and Edge preview, which allows users to create an image simply by using their own words to describe the picture they want to see, and rolled it out initially in Creative mode. Now, with the new update, users can also use Bing Image Creator in Precise and Balanced modes, Microsoft said in a blogpost. Moreover, Bing Chat will now answer travel-related queries with visual results to help portray answers in Bing Travel.
Indian households to make over 50% non-cash transactions by FY26
Indian households make 35% of their financial transactions digitally and usage is expected to cross 50% by Financial Year 2025-26 (FY26), said a report. Pay-to-merchant payments (P2M) account for a significant proportion of digital transactions. Households use digital payment methods for 80% of grocery, food delivery, and travel transactions. First-time e-commerce users during the pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital payments, said the report by Redseer Strategy Consultants & Pine labs. The Indian e-commerce market is worth Rs 400,000 crore and it is expected to reach Rs 900,000 crore by FY26, with customers from Tier 2 and smaller cities driving most of this growth. Online shoppers in India are expected to grow by 50% in the coming three years to reach over 30 crore by FY26, further paving the way for the reach of online payments in the country. As many as 85% of businesses in India will be digitally enabled by FY26, helped by the growth of smartphone use and the internet, and government policies.
75% of Indian businesses will increase investment on data streaming: Report
With data streaming having become the backbone of several critical areas of a business, 75% of Indian businesses are expected to increase their investment on data streaming as it is critical to business competitiveness, according to the latest ‘2023 Data Streaming Report’ by Confluent, a global data streaming platform. Based on a survey of 2,250 IT leaders, including 300 in India, the report states that a robust data streaming technology is a must-have for running a more efficient, responsive, and ultimately more competitive business in this digital-first era. The most successful organizations are those that can swiftly convert data into actionable insights. According to our report, data streaming is widely adopted across businesses in India, delivering significant RoIs, and enabling a multitude of use cases that enhance security, agility, and exceed customer expectations. The impact of data streaming is evident. 78% of IT leaders are seeing significant or emerging benefits from data streaming in their organizations when it comes to faster strategic decision making and 79% reported improved customer acquisition and retention. Additionally, 80% of organizations reported a faster product/service time-to-market.
