G42, a United Arab Emirates-based technology holding group, has started discussions with startups and tech companies in India to build generative AI solutions based on its Hindi large language model (LLM) NANDA, Manu Jain, CEO of its India arm, said in an exclusive interaction with Mint.
With this foundational model, Hindi language speakers can harness the potential of generative AI and specific use-cases can be built in sectors such as banking, aviation, and insurance, besides people building their own applications.
“This model caters to all the sovereign requirements… This will ensure that if a bank uses this model to train, to build something on top of it for fraud detection, for any other purpose, then their data remains within India – not just India, they can choose to keep it within their own premises,” Jain said. The beta version of the model was ready to be taken to private and public entities for potential partnerships.
Launched in India on Tuesday, NANDA is a 13-billion parameter model, trained on a dataset of 2.13 trillion tokens, created through collaboration between G42, Inception (a G42 company), the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, and Cerebras Systems.
The model was trained on Condor Galaxy, one of the most powerful AI supercomputers built by G42 and Cerebras, the companies said in a statement. Data was sourced from various organisations in India, including the Indian Institutes of Technology and AI for Bharat.
The development of NANDA reflects the growing collaboration between India and the UAE in the field of AI. The two nations had signed a memorandum of understanding to establish large-scale data centres and supercomputers, with G42 chosen as the private entity to lead these projects. Jain noted that NANDA was the first significant outcome of this memorandum.
NANDA was built on the lines of JAIS, G42’s Arabic-language LLM, and is proficient in English and Hinglish – writing Hindi words using the English alphabet – commonly used by Indians.
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Andrew Jackson, acting CEO of Inception, said that NANDA would provide multifaceted monetisation opportunities and would be on the same lines provided for JAIS. The model can be offered as a service on Microsoft Azure or on a subscription basis. G42 and Microsoft are partners in expanding the data centre infrastructure in the UAE.
Another way can be to provide it as a box on the premises followed by licensing of the software. Jackson added the latter option was taken up more by businesses using JAIS, as it gives them more control on the AI and integrates the guardrails adopted by the specific country.
The company has established a local entity, G42 India Technology Pvt Ltd, to spearhead these efforts. As the business grows, G42 plans to build a larger team with a focus on digital and AI infrastructure development in India. Jain did not elaborate on the investments the group has made in the India venture.
