By Gaurav Arora
Investors globally have poured $21.4 billion into generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) startups since September last year, up from $5.1 billion in 2022, according to PitchBook data. Startups have always been at the cutting edge of innovation, and in the age of generative AI, they are poised to transform customer experiences and the way we work like never before.
More than 5,000 generative AI startups today are building their solutions on Amazon Web Services (AWS). These startups are disrupting industries by pushing forward new ways of using generative AI to fuel innovation and develop locally relevant solutions. And under the Digital India national strategy, generative AI is set to help the country’s economy accelerate growth across all industrial sectors, driven largely by startups.
Innovation Powered by AI
Startups are at the forefront of generative AI revolution across the spectrum, ranging from building foundational models (FMs) to adopting existing ones to develop real-world applications. To date, startups using generative AI have already transformed a wide variety of industries, including healthcare, financial services, media and entertainment, education, and gaming. By automating tasks, enhancing decision-making processes, and personalizing user experiences, generative AI continues to revolutionize how businesses and organizations of all sizes operate.
For example, in the healthcare and wellness sector, AI-assisted tools can provide personalized solutions at scale. India-based health-tech startup HealthifyMe caters to more than 35 million users with over 2,000 nutritionists and fitness trainers. The company is using AWS’s generative AI services to power its Call Analytics solution to enable a deeply personalized service experience for its customers by providing real-time feedback to coaches to help them empathize better and tailor their guidance. The Amazon Bedrock-powered solution is expected to give an up to 75% increase in coaches’ capacity to accommodate clients.
HealthifyMe has also recently launched Snap, a food recognition system that uses AI to identify and track food intake using photos. Snap makes nutrition tracking easier by using vision-based machine learning (ML) models to detect food items, calories, quantity, portion, and nutrients. Snap has led to an 80% increase in meal tracking consistency among customers.
Another Indian startup, Blend, democratizes access to studio-quality photography and generative AI through its deep-learning powered photo and design editing app. Blend identifies the product and its pose in the photo, instantly removes the background, and automatically generates thousands of designs optimized for 16 ecommerce marketplaces and eight social media platforms within minutes. Using AWS services, Blend’s deep learning algorithms generate more than a million designs every day, helping thousands of ecommerce businesses create ready-to-use product listings and marketing images.
Inclusive AI
From inception to adoption of generative AI, startups have played an instrumental role in propelling the advancement and evolution of the technology across industries. As startups continue to drive innovation, they also face significant hurdles that encompass resource limitations, ethical and regulatory complexities, integration obstacles, and the absence of in-house expertise or technical proficiency.
To overcome these hurdles, startups need access to cloud resources that level the playing field, across all layers of the generative AI “stack” to make it even easier, cheaper, and faster to build, train, and scale generative AI innovations. At the infrastructure (bottom) layer, startups need price performant ML chips and tools to train models and run inferences.
For startups looking to experiment with existing models at the tools (middle) layer, an expanded choice of leading models, customization features, agent capabilities, and enterprise-grade security and privacy help to democratize access to generative AI and drive innovation. At the application (top) layer, startups can transform how they work through generative-AI powered assistants and productivity tools.
Going Global
As the foundation is laid for the generative AI revolution, global expansion becomes paramount to ensure widespread adoption of startup-driven generative AI solutions across diverse industries. A leading conversational AI solutions provider, Yellow. AI, has listed its generative AI customer service solution on AWS Marketplace, which is a curated digital catalog with over 330,000 active customer subscriptions. Today, Yellow.AI handles over 12 billion conversations across more than 85 countries annually.
Startups in Asia-Pacific continue to prove what’s possible by building, customizing, and scaling their own generative AI solutions. Price-performant and cost-efficient ML tools, support, infrastructure, and programs like AWS Activate will help to accelerate generative AI adoption and realize an AI-assisted future with innovative solutions that will drive positive impact for all.
The author is director and head of startup business – Asia Pacific and Japan, Amazon Web Services
