Krutrim reports first profit, triples revenue as it pivots to AI cloud

Startup founded by Bhavish Aggarwal triples revenue to ₹300 crore, shifts capital from chip ambitions to infrastructure-led services

Krutrim, the artificial intelligence startup founded by Ola’s Bhavish Aggarwal, is sharpening its focus on domestic cloud services as it pivots towards an infrastructure-led model, reporting its first annual profit alongside a surge in revenue.

 

The company said FY26 revenue rose to about ₹300 crore, roughly three times the previous year, while it posted a net profit with a margin exceeding 10 per cent, marking a milestone in its push for a more sustainable business.

 

The repositioning follows a business realignment undertaken in late 2025, which involved a deliberate reallocation of capital and talent, including a pause on chip design initiatives to concentrate the company’s resources on building and scaling its core AI cloud services stack. The result is a full-stack cloud service built entirely in-house, deployed at large scale without external dependencies. Krutrim’s platform reflects a high degree of vertical integration across the cloud stack, enabling optimised performance, cost efficiency, and greater control for AI and enterprise workloads.

 

“The firm pivoted after pausing chip designing and fabrication plans, which were very capital intensive,” said a person with knowledge about the company’s strategy. “It reallocated capital to AI cloud services, which also meant laying off talent.”

 

Krutrim said it is among the limited players in India operating a full-stack, domestically built AI cloud service at production scale. It is supporting complex, real-time workloads across sectors such as mobility, manufacturing, and customer operations.

 

The pivot has yielded a structurally different business. Krutrim is now financially self-sustaining, with no immediate requirement for external funding, including from its founder. The firm said the first net profit reflects not just revenue growth but a disciplined operating model built around AI cloud services.

 

“The company has reached an important milestone of being profitable, self-funded, and gaining market traction,” said a Krutrim spokesperson. “Our AI cloud is built for Indian enterprises, by Indian engineers. The external client momentum we are seeing validates the depth of our platform.”

 

The repositioning has begun generating external market traction. Krutrim is seeing increasing adoption, with over 25 large enterprise customers, including leading telecom service providers, top financial institutions, consumer internet platforms, AI and deep-tech companies, healthcare, logistics platforms, and digital-first enterprises — a cross-sector roster that reflects the platform’s applicability beyond the Ola Group. Krutrim’s GPU compute capacity is witnessing strong external demand, with a majority of capacity already committed to external enterprise workloads.

 

With its infrastructure built domestically and a self-funding operating model now in place, Krutrim said it is positioned to deepen its enterprise cloud footprint amid growing demand for sovereign, India-built AI cloud services.

 

In 2024, Krutrim achieved unicorn status — a term used to describe startups valued at $1 billion or above — following its inaugural funding round. The round, which saw participation from notable investors, such as Matrix Partners India, garnered investments worth $50 million in equity at a valuation of $1 billion.

 

With this, Krutrim claimed the distinction of being India’s first AI company to reach unicorn status and also the title of the country’s fastest unicorn. Krutrim, which translates to “artificial” in Sanskrit, was launched in April 2023 by Aggarwal and Krishnamurthy Venugopala Tenneti, a board member of ANI Technologies that owns Ola and Ola Electric.

 

At that time, the AI startup was the third venture helmed by Aggarwal to achieve a $1 billion valuation, after mobility firm Ola and electric vehicle manufacturer Ola Electric.