Zero Shot

Say you want a chunk of plywood. Or a passenger lift. Or a power cable. Or a corrugated packaging box. Chances are you will find yourself on IndiaMART, the country’s largest B2B marketplace connecting buyers with suppliers. With 60% of market share and a 12,000 crore market cap, the company essentially commands this space. Say you want a chunk of plywood. Or a passenger lift. Or a power cable. Or a corrugated packaging box. Chances are you will find yourself on IndiaMART, the country’s largest B2B marketplace connecting buyers with suppliers. With 60% of market share and a 12,000 crore market cap, the company essentially commands this space. There is one major problem though: ChatGPT. In December, IndiaMART filed a petition against OpenAI in the Calcutta High Court for “selective discrimination” at the hands of the company, saying that its LLM “specifically and consciously” excludes it from its results while servicing other e-commerce platforms. In a hearing, the court said the exclusion seems to have occurred “without any logic”. The case is ongoing. As our host Praveen Gopal Krishnan says, the “specifics of the case are far less interesting” than the proverbial can it seems to have kicked down the road. The case asks some crucial second, third, and fourth order questions about AI, competition, and who gets to win in this new market. To answer all of those questions and give us a picture of the regulatory landscape of India, we have Samir R Gandhi on this episode. Samir heads Axiom5, a boutique law firm specialising in competition law. He has spent over two decades at various law firms, and has had a ringside view of the development of competition law in India from the time of its enactment.He says the case gives him a sense of “deja vu” because it is fundamentally about an old incumbent being challenged by a disrupter. But the questions posed by AI systems — “part morality, part philosophical, part business model, part geopolitics” — will have wide-ranging implications for the market from a legal standpoint. Tune in! This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao.____Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken. Write to us at [email protected]. We are all ears!____Recommended Reading: Ghosted by the bot: Why IndiaMART is desperate to be visible on ChatGPTCCI Rejects Allegations of Anti-Competitive Conduct against Uber and OlaAccioAmazon V. Perplexity: Welcome To The Battle For The Future Of Commerce

“We were so close to the finish line and boom ‘SaaS is dead’. We are restarting…. There is one more round to run.”That’s an honest admission from Avinash Raghava, the founding volunteer and CEO of the pay-it-forward community SaaSBoomi. As someone who has spent years building networks and communities — at Nasscom, Accel, and Together Fund previously — Avinash has a full view of the inflection point that founders are at.They are having to reinvent themselves, change business models and pivot entirely to become AI-native. The idea is to disrupt their own models before the market does. SaaSBoomi is undergoing its own transformation. It is now AIBoomi, with the primary focus of helping founders navigate the new world where old SaaS playbooks are irrelevant. Can there be a new playbook? How does one write it? How does one learn, grow, and create a community along the way? Avinash takes on all of these questions in this episode. The result is a conversation that captures and dissects the crossroads that SaaS is currently at. Tune in!____This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN.____Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken. Write to us at [email protected]. We are all ears!____Recommended Reading: ​​Which Software Companies Will Survive the SaaSpocalypseThe Three-Body Problem (novel)Dark forest hypothesishttps://annual.aiboomi.org/Over 100 Indian AI startup founders moving to US for funds and talentVoice AI has gone from whisper to commotion. Can the market get any louder?

As enterprises make sure their employees use AI, integrate it into their workflows, track productivity, and highlight AI usage in their investor calls, a new kind of tension is emerging within organisations. Engineers are simply not happy with the tools they have been assigned. They want flexibility and deals with companies that make tools that actually work for them. Some are even ready to go back to no tools. Verifying AI-generated code, they say, is an extra layer that is only burdening them. Meanwhile, India’s enterprise AI ecosystem is thriving. The country has emerged as one of the fastest-growing markets for tech giant Microsoft’s AI programmer Github Copilot. In December, the company had announced that more than 200,000 Copilot licences would be deployed across TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and Cognizant. At the recent AI summit, OpenAI and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) agreed on rolling out Enterprise ChatGPT internally. Anthropic tied up with Infosys to deploy Claude models and AI agents into enterprise workflows.Mrunmayee Kulkarni, The Ken’s AI reporter, spoke to dozens of employees and tech leaders to get to the heart of the tension. She joins us today to dissect it along with Ashwin Sekhar, the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Incred. In fact, Ashwin commented on Mrunmayee’s story. His interesting take made us reach out to him and start a conversation. And now, he finds himself on the podcast. We’d love to hear all of your takes, opinions, and thoughts. Please write to us at [email protected] *This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN.Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken.Additional Reading: Engineers gag as Amazon, TCS, and Cognizant ram ‘mandatory AI’ into everyday workAnthropic goes to warOur agreement with the Department of WarEveryone in Seattle Hates AI

Here’s a fresh take on the India AI Impact Summit that took place last week in New Delhi: it was two events stitched together, happening at the same time. There was the expo, where companies and nations showcased their products and services to 250,000 visitors. And then there was a conference where the geopolitical effects of AI were front and centre.Inderpal Singh, one of The Ken’s reporters, was on site to find out where the action was. Hear his firsthand account about what really mattered at the summit, what India’s builders were up to, and how it felt to be at what’s called the largest AI-themed gathering ever.Then, hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Brady Ng discuss the ramifications of the summit and the way India is positioned—as an AI middle power, or something else? Plus, one country’s delegates were noticeably absent, and the two hosts have opposite takes on what that means.Tune in for all that and more.If you were at the India AI Impact Summit, tell us about it at [email protected] *This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN.Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken.Additional Reading: Indian university faces backlash for claiming Chinese robodog as own at AI summitAI impact summit layoutNew Delhi declaration At A.I. Summit, India Tries to Find a Way Between the U.S. and China

Welcome to Zero Shot, a weekly podcast by The Ken where Praveen, Brady, and Rohin ponder the latest developments in artificial intelligence—in India and around the world.This week, Brady starts by considering how backlashes against AI—whether it stems from job displacement, data centre construction, or general unease and uncertainty—gives major tech companies the conditions to centralise the internet even more. This is particularly true in the US, in contrast to a regulatory regime in China that encourages a set of diverse players.Praveen turns his attention to Deepinder Goyal, the outspoken CEO and co-founder of Zomato, who tweeted out a lengthy treatise in response to strikes by delivery workers. But… it turns out Goyal’s piece of text was probably generated using artificial intelligence. What prompted the change in how Goyal engages with his audience, and what does it mean if more personal messages by business leaders carry this flavour?Finally, Rohin profiles Emergent, a vibe-coding platform that lets users deploy production-ready apps and websites. It uses a multi-agent system that is favoured by non-technical users, and was one of the most-used tools by participants in The Ken’s recent Case-Build Competition. Founded by twin brothers Mukund and Madhav Jha, Emergent has roped in $30 million in funding and hit $25 million annual recurring revenue in five months.Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated by AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken.As always, we love hearing from our listeners! Write to us with comments, critiques, suggestions, or just say hi at [email protected]. We respond to everyone who contacts us.Additional ReadingThe January Chasmhttps://the-ken.com/newsletter/first-principles/the-january-chasm/Microsoft: Out with Office, in with Copilothttps://www.office.comMicrosoft CEO begs users to stop calling it “slop”https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/microsoft-satya-nadella-ai-slopIndiaAI startups resist Centre’s plan to seek equity for supporthttps://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/artificial-intelligence/indiaai-startups-resist-centres-plan-to-seek-equity-for-support/articleshow/126356889.cmsManus gets the best of both worlds—Chinese development for a global producthttps://the-ken.com/columns/zero-shot/manus-gets-the-best-of-both-worlds-chinese-development-for-a-global-product/Mark Zuckerberg: ‘The internet needs new rules. Let’s start in these four areas’https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mark-zuckerberg-the-internet-needs-new-rules-lets-start-in-these-four-areas/2019/03/29/9e6f0504-521a-11e9-a3f7-78b7525a8d5f_story.html‘Last one on this topic, and I have been holding this in myself for a while…’https://x.com/deepigoyal/status/2007030873711927381Emergenthttps://app.emergent.sh/landing/