Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, who received a near-$1Bn payout when Walmart acquired India’s first big homegrown startup success, has been doing angel investing and readying up new startup stints. Among the latter, is a new AI-as-a-service startup aiming to cater to global clientele with AI talents, products, and services, reports Bloomberg. The startup is already in motion, employing a team of primarily AI scientists to craft innovative offerings. It is currently in stealth.
The AI venture is reportedly headquartered in Singapore, although its core operations will be based in Bengaluru. Currently, it’s in a stealth phase, working on product development, with a scheduled unveiling expected in the later half of 2024. The company is also planning an expansion into the market of United States.
Bansal’s move is strategically geared towards leveraging India’s English-speaking youth for training experts in AI, especially focusing on smaller cities where the cost of living is lower. The precise nature of the products has been kept under wraps as of now, but the startup’s initial target industries are expected to include legal and e-commerce sectors. Plans are also seemingly in place to expand into financial services, data science, and analytics sectors.
The emergence of powerful AI tools has evidently fueled a surge in AI-related services. As corporations explore the application of AI — generative AI in particular –in various business domains, the demand for such services is anticipated to experience rapid growth. India’s IT giants — TCS, Infosys and the likes — have already started tapping into the demand, and Bansal is positioning his new startup as a direct competitor to these IT behemoths, in the AI domain.
Binny Bansal made a significant fortune from Flipkart, which he co-founded with fellow alumnus Sanchin Bansal. The e-commerce giant’s success ultimately led to its acquisition by Walmart in 2018 for $16 billion. Currently, Bansal is a significant investor in tech startups and remains associated with the Flipkart board and PhonePe, a digital payment service.
