AI startup Anthropic challenges OpenAI and Google with new chatbot
The high-profile AI startup Anthropic released a new version of its Claude chatbot, saying it outperforms other leading chatbots on a range of standard benchmark tests, including systems from Google and OpenAI. Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive and co-founder, said the new technology, called Claude 3 Opus, was particularly useful when analyzing scientific data or generating computer code. Chatbots like ChatGPT can answer questions, write term papers, generate small computer programs and more. They may also generate false or misleading information, much as people do. When OpenAI released a new version of its technology called GPT-4 last spring, it was widely considered the most powerful chatbot technology used by both consumers and businesses. Google recently introduced a comparable technology, Gemini. But the leading AI companies have been distracted by one controversy after another. They say the computer chips needed to build AI are in short supply. Still, the technology continues to improve at a remarkable pace.Anthropic claims that its Claude 3 Opus technology outperforms both GPT-4 and Gemini in mathematical problem solving, computer coding, general knowledge and other areas. Claude 3 Opus is open to consumers who pay $20 per month for a subscription. A less powerful version, called Claude 3 Sonnet, is available for free. The firm also rolled out Haiku — another chatbot.
India AI mission to provide funding, support to deeptech startups: Experts
The government’s focus on deeptech startups, via the recently-announced India artificial intelligence (AI) mission, is a “good starting point” to building a conducive investment environment for the sector, said industry stakeholders. The mission’s focus on accelerating research and development (R&D) in these companies, experts say, will bolster innovation and create new business models in the sector. The Union Cabinet, last week, approved an outlay of Rs 10,372 crore for five years for the India AI Mission. It is aimed at fostering innovation in AI through public-private partnerships (PPPs). Of this, close to Rs 2,000 crore has been earmarked for financing deeptech startups, with a focus on accelerating R&D in these firms. The move will provide the much-needed financial assistance to deeptech startups in the country, an area which founders say has been a major roadblock for innovation in the sector. According to industry estimates, there are around 3,000 deeptech startups currently operating in India. Less than 20 percent of these have been able to secure proper financial support. Industry stakeholders say that the Rs 2,000-crore budgetary allocation for the sector is a good start towards building a conducive investment environment in the country.
BigBasket and Flipkart accelerate delivery services to compete with quick commerce rivals
Over the last two months, both BigBasket, an online grocer, and Flipkart, a leading ecommerce platform, have streamlined their delivery processes. This move comes as they face heightened competition from quick commerce firms like Blinkit and Zepto, and as consumer demand for fast delivery continues to rise, extending even to non-metro areas. In January, Tata Digital-owned BigBasket unveiled its rebranding of the slotted delivery service as “Supersaver,” promising to deliver products in under two hours. This revamped service allows users to pick a slot for their groceries to be delivered. Walmart-owned Flipkart has also introduced same-day delivery of products across multiple categories in 20 cities, at no extra charge. Hari Menon, the co-founder and chief executive of BigBasket, disclosed that the company has replaced all its delivery vans with bikes and now conducts all deliveries from its dark stores. Additionally, it redesigned its carrying baskets to enhance capacity and eliminated the ‘bays’ utilized for loading vans in its dark stores to accommodate more stock keeping items (SKUs). The faster delivery timelines are also being extended to tier-2 markets, catering to a substantial consumer base for companies like Flipkart and BigBasket, driven by the growing demand for quicker delivery services. The same-day ecommerce delivery service, pioneered by Amazon through its Prime subscription model in 2017, has recently witnessed a revival. Flipkart initiated its same-day delivery service in 2014, covering 10 cities. However, it eventually discontinued the service. During that period, users were charged a shipping fee of INR 200. With the new service, customers can have their orders delivered before midnight if placed by 1 PM, as stated by the company. The firm also announced plans to extend this feature to other cities in the upcoming months. Last year, Flipkart announced investments in multiple fulfillment centers and advanced technological capabilities to improve the sorting of products, all geared towards enabling same-day delivery. “Considering that customers not just from metro cities but non-metros cities love to shop on Flipkart, we are working to provide same-day delivery to 20 cities, reinforcing our commitment to staying at the forefront of customer satisfaction. We will further scale it in the months to come, to include more cities and more categories including large appliances, to delight the customers,” said Hemant Badri of Flipkart Group. This development follows closely on the heels of Flipkart introducing its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) offering to an initial group of users, marking another stride in fortifying its foothold in the fintech sector. In October last year, Flipkart introduced “Flipkart VIP” at an annual fee of INR 499, which is INR 500 lower than the cost of Amazon Prime membership. The membership entails complimentary same-day/next-day deliveries for VIP members in specific areas. However, the company did not specify whether one-day delivery is exclusively reserved for VIP members. It is worth mentioning that with the rising prevalence of smartphones, the utilization of UPI and the broader digital payments infrastructure has surged in the country. Notably, in the most recent developments, Zomato, a major player in the foodtech industry, and the Indian arm of global digital payments startup Stripe have obtained approval from the RBI to operate as online payment aggregators.
AI trends in CRM: The future of customer relationships
Salesforce CRM stands at the cusp of a transformative journey slated for 2024. CRM integrated with AI provides an impactful customer experience. Very soon CRM integrated with AI will be worth about $72.9 BN. It will save a lot of time in the areas of customer retention, data handling. It will also optimize processes. Many CRM users have integrated technology into their CRM systems. As a result, customer engagement is reaching new heights. A survey indicated that ‘Chatbots’ can interact with 70% of customers. Sales representatives save a couple of hours by automation using AI, thus spending more time in selling. There are a growing number of customers who use Business Intelligence & Predictive analysis tools. These tools provide businesses with deeper insights into market trends, customer insights. And these use AI. The integration of Natural Language Processing (NLP) into the Salesforce application is revolutionizing user interactions. By converging conversational and intuitive exchanges, NLP is enhancing the usability of data analysis and reporting. Models of Adaptive Learning have increased user satisfaction.
Govt Sets Up Digital Centre in Delhi to Empower Farmers
To empower the farmers of the country by equipping them with information, services, and facilities using digital technology, Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Arjun Munda inaugurated the Agriculture Integrated Command and Control Center at the Krishi Bhawan in Delhi. The Command Centre will show all the digital innovations being made in the field of agriculture by the ministry on a big screen. The screen will show plot level data obtained from soil survey, information obtained from crop survey through remote sensing technology, information given by the meteorological department, data obtained from digital crop survey, information available on agricultural map, and information available on the produce (Upag) portal created for agricultural statistics. This is expected to help the farmers make better decisions to increase crop output.
‘Digital Media to Top M&E Ad Charts’
Digital media is projected to overtake television as the biggest media & entertainment (M&E) segment for the first time in 2024, industry association Ficci and professional services major EY said in a joint report. While TV was the largest M&E segment in 2023, it was the only one to contract due to a 6.5% decline in advertising as a result of a slowdown in expenditure by gaming and D2C brands, which hit premium properties, the report said. The report revealed that for the first time in 15 years, except for Covid-19, advertising spending grew slower than nominal GDP growth. The slowing of India’s nominal GDP growth to 9% in 2023, following two years of double-digit rises, had an impact on advertising, which increased by only 7%, it said. Advertising, the report said, was also affected by a ban on high-yield categories like gaming and betting and a decrease in D2C brand investments. As per the report, the Indian M&E sector experienced 8.1% growth in 2023 to reach ₹2.32 lakh crore. The sector is projected to grow by 10.2% to reach ₹2.55 lakh crore in 2024, followed by a 10% CAGR growth to ₹3.08 lakh crore by 2026. Ashish Pherwani, partner and M&E leader at EY India, said the sector is at an inflection point, with digital channels dominating but traditional media still expanding.
Flipkart launches UPI service in partnership with Axis Bank
E-commerce marketplace Flipkart launched UPI services in partnership with Axis Bank. Users who register for Flipkart UPI will get an @fkaxis handle and can use the same for fund transfers and payments using the Flipkart app. It will initially be available to Android users, the company said. Flipkart also said that it will create a new loyalty program for its UPI users wherein they get rewards in the form of Supercoins, cashback, and other benefits for using Flipkart UPI.
ONDC completes more than 7.1 million cumulative orders
ONDC completes more than 7.1 MN cumulative orders in February since inception a year ago. Among these, 3.56 MN, or 52.8%, orders were mobility orders, while 3.19 million, or 47.2%, were non-mobility orders. The network now has more than 370,000 sellers and service providers, from top brands to farmers and taxi drivers. It is now also serving in 588 ‘countable cities’. This is approximately 70% of cities in India. Countable cities are defined by the network as cities or districts with more than 100 orders per month in the last three months. Overall, ONDC has fulfilled transactions in more than 800 cities in India. Mobility through ONDC is now live in seven cities: Bengaluru, Mysuru, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Delhi, Chennai and Kochi. ONDC onboarding Chennai Metro train services is a crucial step towards multimodal mobility through the network. ONDC has also commenced a pilot to onboard street food vendors in Delhi and Lucknow. The plan is to onboard 500 street food vendors in the next two months in both these cities followed by a nationwide scale up with more seller and buyer apps. Seller apps onboard merchants while buyer apps are customer-facing apps on which orders are placed.
Reddit Pro with tools designed for business growth
On a daily basis, genuine individuals visit Reddit to feed their interests, find solutions to issues, and make choices. The interest-based communities on Reddit, hidden behind billions of posts and comments, provide a unique platform for businesses to learn about, interact with, and comprehend online. The platform has now announced Reddit Pro: a free suite of tools for businesses to also establish and grow a meaningful organic presence. These tools will transform the way businesses engage on our platform, and in turn, connect people with the businesses they are most interested in, whether used in conjunction with their Reddit ads or as a stand-alone source of organic engagement.
Elon Musk’s Chatbot Grok To Go Open-Source
Elon Musk pledged to open-source his artificial intelligence company xAI’s chatbot Grok, a pivotal move to make the generative AI bot available for free to the public as the world’s second-richest man sues rival OpenAI and took on Google over its allegedly “woke” generative AI product, Gemini. By making Grok open-source, Musk would effectively allow the public to freely and publicly access the AI bot, which xAI released last year, keeping it restricted to X users who pay a $16 monthly subscription. Open-source modeling has become a focal point of Musk’s in recent months, after the billionaire sued OpenAI—the company he co-founded and later left—for allegedly backtracking on its founding pledge of creating an open-source model to instead prioritize shareholders. Musk, who left OpenAI in 2018 over criticisms that it prioritized profits over safety, has been both a proponent of artificial intelligence and one of its harshest critics, calling for a pause on AI development last year over fears of an “out-of-control race” to create increasingly advanced products. After launching xAI last March, Musk released the company’s first product in November, naming it Grok and making it available to paid subscribers on X, formerly known as Twitter.