Ola’s AI assistant Kruti is currently inaccessible across platforms and the web
The outage comes amid layoffs and ongoing turbulence at Krutrim
Raises concerns over stability of Ola’s ambitious AI expansion plans
Ola’s AI ambitions appear to have hit another roadblock. The company’s AI assistant, Kruti, has gone offline. The application is currently unavailable across app stores and the web, or even within the Ola platform where it was previously integrated.
The Kruti website, kruti.ai, shows a “site not found’ popup. In the meantime, users who are trying to visit the AI assistant through the Ola website see a message saying ‘service is under maintenance and will return soon’. The Economic Times was the first publication to report this update.
1 April 2026
Get the latest issue of Outlook Business
Kruti was launched last year to execute tasks such as cab booking, food ordering, bill payments, image creation and in-depth research. At that time, the company claimed Kruti was the first AI assistant in India to move beyond passive chatbot responses.
It used to support both voice and text inputs, remember previous user interactions and adapt responses based on user preferences. The app was built on Krutrim’s V2 model with 12 billion parameters. It was embedded across Ola’s ecosystem, enabling features like ride bookings, food orders and bill payments.
For developers, Kruti provided an embeddable software development kit (SDK) that allows integration of its AI capabilities into third-party platforms, including memory management, and tool execution.
Krutrim’s Broader Turbulence
The latest disruption also comes against the backdrop of ongoing turmoil at Krutrim. The company has carried out multiple rounds of layoffs in 2025, particularly impacting its linguistics team.
In a recent round, around 50 employees, including team leads and regional language transcribers working in Bengali, Malayalam and Punjabi, were let go as part of a restructuring effort.
This followed earlier cuts of about 100 employees, taking the total number of layoffs this year to nearly 200, according to media reports. These layoffs also included a number of senior-level exits in recent months.
Bhavish Aggarwal's AI Dream
Outlook Business, in its January 2026 edition, had reported the ongoing crisis at Ola’s Krutrim and how Bhavish Aggarwal speed is breaking India’s only AI unicorn.
For Aggarwal it was about national pride. He wanted to challenge tech giants in their own dens, OpenAI in models, Nvidia in chips and Microsoft in data centres, to build an entirely sovereign AI infrastructure.
He has continued to stick his neck out for his vision. Over the past year, he has pledged a chunk of his Ola Electric stake to secure debt for Krutrim.
Industry insiders has said that Krutim has been unable to raise more equity money due to a lack of any breakout traction across its products, especially at a time when AI start-ups are scaling from zero to $100mn-plus in revenue within a year.
