Google grants $1 million fund to Indian AI start-up Karya

Karya is working on democratising the generative AI-powered tools and making them available to less privileged people to increase the income and sustain their livlihood.

Since the start of the Google for India initiative in 2015, the search engine has been offering mentorship programmes, networking platforms to meet venture capitalists, advanced tools and even offer monetary grants to help budding startups to scale up their businesses and reach a wider audience worldwide.

Continuing its efforts in India, Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the American technology company on Tuesday (November 11) announced to grand $1 million (approx. 8.44 crore) fund to Karya, an emerging Artificial Intelligence(AI) startup.

Karya is working on democratising the generative AI-powered tools and making them available to less privileged people.

In the last two years, the Mumbai-based start-up has facilitated over 50,000 people in rural India, with approximately 90 per cent representing marginalized communities, to access high-paying data annotation work that has supplemented their household incomes.

"Our goal at Karya is to lay down an ethical foundation for an AI-enabled future. AI may generate hundreds of billions of dollars in economic value, but the question we ask is—how much of that can we put directly into the hands of people who need it most? At Karya, we believe that low-income communities around the world are not only excellent beneficiaries of AI, but they are also excellent builders of AI. We want to use AI to bring earning and learning opportunities to low-income communities across the Global South, " said Manu Chopra, Co-founder and CEO, of Karya.

The company aims to offer AI-enabled economic opportunities to more than 100,000 people.

Now, Karya is developing a multilingual chatbot to support workers with digital work. Besides India, it will make the digital work platform available to partner organizations based in the African continent, as well.

“At Google.org, we’re committed to seeing the transformative power of technology bring opportunity within everyone’s grasp. And with AI the most potent present-day force reshaping the global economy, we are bringing our resources and capabilities to ensure that the opportunities it unlocks are rewarding for everyone, regardless of their background or circumstance. We’ve been deeply encouraged to see Karya share this commitment, and are now proud to support its new chapter in nurturing both aptitude and appetite as it brings AI opportunities to underserved communities, and helps ensure the benefits of this revolutionary technology are truly universal,” said Alex Diaz, Head of AI for Social Good, Google.org.

It should be noted that last month, as part of Google's AI Skills House, a new initiative to empower 10 million Indians with AI training, and announced a philanthropic grant of $4 million (around Rs 67.50 crore) to Central Square Foundation to support awareness amongst 5 million students, educators and parents across India on the meaningful and responsible use of AI.

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