Siddharth Bhatia

Co-Founder @puch_ai. Previously @Google, @awscloud, @NUSingapore

[Siddharth Bhatia @siddharthb_]

Ashish Vaswani's Attention Is All You Need 🙈

[Siddharth Bhatia @siddharthb_]

@karpathy Another reason why Anthropic will win.

[Siddharth Bhatia @siddharthb_]

Clarifying a few things, starting with the MoU.

Are you taking taxpayer money?
No. The MoU signed with the UP Government is structured as a public-private partnership. It does not involve any cost to the taxpayers of Uttar Pradesh. On the contrary, it brings investment into the state. The project will be executed in phases, with support from external investment partners. We have not taken any money, any GPUs, or any other form of support from the Government. The only part of this MoU that involves citizens is that they'll receive free access to AI, in their own language and through familiar interfaces, via AI Commons.

Is your revenue ₹42.9 lakh?
No. This is a bug in Google’s AI, which has confused Puch AI with another company called Pucho AI. The ₹42.9 lakh revenue figure belongs to Pucho AI, not Puch AI. Puch AI’s revenue is not public.

What’s your valuation/annual revenue? Are you bootstrapped?
We’ll share those details when the time is right. For now, as a private company, we’re not required to make our valuation or revenue public. But, if you’re curious, we're not bootstrapped. We’re a well-funded startup.

Do you have a foundational model of your own?
No, and we do not believe it is necessary for our mission to build one at this stage.

What is your mission?
We want to bring AI to everyone in India. Today, many people already use tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, but millions still cannot. Your parents, shopkeepers, drivers, and many others are being left out because AI, in its current form, is not built for them.

What exactly is Puch AI doing?
Puch AI is building the domestic consumer AI offering for the masses. We're bringing AI to people through simple, familiar interfaces like WhatsApp and voice calls, so that it is easy to use even for those who cannot type and prefer to interact through voice.

Why don’t you have your own app?
We understand the frustration people feel about this, and at times it is frustrating for us as well (currently fighting Meta on the WhatsApp policy). But so far, this has been a conscious choice. A new app becomes one more thing to learn and one more barrier for the millions of people who are currently not using AI. Try teaching your parents a new app!

So are you asking me to not use ChatGPT or other AIs in the name of nationalism?
No, not at all. People should use whatever AI works best for them. Our effort is simply to expand access to AI by bringing it to millions who, today, are unable to use the existing tools.

Is Puch AI just a wrapper?
Wrappers are generally defined as making API calls to AI providers like OpenAI and Anthropic. So no, Puch AI is not a wrapper. We do not use any APIs. We have built our entire infrastructure in-house on top of open-source models, and engineered it for the Indian context. However, if you define a wrapper as any company that does not have a foundational model pretrained from scratch, then yes, Puch AI is a wrapper.

What is the point of Puch AI if you haven’t even built a model?
The problem is data. Today, ChatGPT and Gemini are the default go-to AI apps for almost everyone in India who uses AI. As more people use them, these companies keep getting more and more data to improve their models. That data will never help Sarvam, BharatGen, or any other domestic AI model builder. More importantly, the bulk of India will end up accessing information through OpenAI or Google: their systems and their narratives that may ultimately be shaped by foreign actors. With Puch AI, we are trying to build sovereign distribution, so that India has at least one alternative, no matter how hopeless it may seem to compete with OpenAI or Google’s marketing.

Puch AI seems relatively simple. I can build it in a weekend. Are you even doing anything?
The choice of a simple interface is deliberate, but the underlying infrastructure is far from simple. Happy to give ₹50 lakh to anyone who can build it in a weekend, match our performance in Indian languages, and offer it for free at our consumer scale.

How was your experience building for India?
It is a very interesting situation, where the Government understands the importance and wants to do good, but it becomes difficult to do any good when so many bad actors are rooting for you to fail. Thousands of paid accounts are ready to try to shape narratives to fit their own political agenda. Everything from Community Notes to actual news articles and journalism gets weaponized against you, because your failure gets more views.

Will you keep fighting?
Not sure. Quite exhausted. Maybe this is the time to sign off.

[Siddharth Bhatia @siddharthb_]

@anuragrathor @myprasanna Google’s AI has incorrectly assigned https://t.co/CnDHGOac5s’s revenue to Puch AI.

[Yogi Adityanath @myogiadityanath]

New Uttar Pradesh is embracing the power of Artificial Intelligence.

A ₹25,000 Crore MoU with Puch AI will bring AI Parks, large-scale data center infrastructure, AI Commons, and an AI University to the state.

This initiative will strengthen governance, drive innovation, and create future-ready opportunities for our youth.

[Indian Tech & Infra @IndianTechGuide]

🚨 Rajnath Singh meets Siddharth Bhatia, Puch AI CEO to discuss sovereign AI distribution, safeguarding Indian data, and addressing national security concerns arising from the growing use of foreign AI apps.

[Piyush Goyal Office @PiyushGoyalOffc]

Minister @PiyushGoyal met @SiddharthB_, Co-Founder & CEO of @Puch_ai, and discussed opportunities to expand AI adoption in India, particularly through voice-first and vernacular AI solutions.

Also exchanged views on leveraging AI to support startups, MSMEs, and citizen services, while encouraging innovation in building globally competitive AI products from India.

[Siddharth Bhatia @siddharthb_]

@nikitabier No, the biggest day on 𝕏 in history is tomorrow.

[Siddharth Bhatia @siddharthb_]

@kunalb11 Most people don’t hate change, they hate uncertainty.

[Siddharth Bhatia @siddharthb_]

When AGI?
The day Dario and Sam hold hands.

[NDTV @ndtv]

#NDTVIndAISummit | Siddharth Bhatia, Co-founder & CEO, Puch AI reveals the reason behind naming his brand Puch AI

@SPF_India @ShwetaRKohli

Knowledge Partner: Dayananda Sagar University
State Partner: UP Government (@upgovt)
Insurance Partner: Axis Max Life Insurance (@AxisMaxLifeIns)
Associate Partner: Rocket (@rocketdotnew)
Associate Partner: Union Bank (@UnionBankTweets)
Associate Partner: Zoho (@zoho)
Impact Partner: Adani Solar & Adani Ports
Special Partner: Lokpriya Gopinath Bardoloi
Travel Partner: Gaura Travels
Real Estate Partner: Eldeco

[Puch AI @puch_ai]

We're hiring at the AI Impact Summit.

[Siddharth Bhatia @siddharthb_]

@sundarpichai See tomorrow's newspaper as well 😊

[Siddharth Bhatia @siddharthb_]

@amanrajpaswan Come to our booth tomorrow and take mine 😊

[Siddharth Bhatia @siddharthb_]

Scenes from Puch AI booth at the AI Impact Summit

[Siddharth Bhatia @siddharthb_]

@Naive_enough Kal booth par aa jaana aur interview maang lena 😊

[Siddharth Bhatia @siddharthb_]

@SanjuFTG Haha, try to find that out. You might just get something crazy as well.

[Siddharth Bhatia @siddharthb_]

@nirajxdev Puch

[Siddharth Bhatia @siddharthb_]

@ghumare64 See you tomorrow 🙋‍♂️

[Siddharth Bhatia @siddharthb_]

@rish_shady209 Comment karna jaruri tha kya??

[Siddharth Bhatia @siddharthb_]

Over the last few days at the World Economic Forum in Davos, I met the who’s who of the world: presidents, prime ministers, intelligence chiefs, billionaires and Turing Award winners. It left me with an observation.

I saw two kinds of people here.

The first came looking for money, power, and fame. And they got what they wanted. But no matter how high they climb, there’s always someone “higher” to meet, someone “more famous” to be seen with. The ladder never ends, and the satisfaction never comes.

The second came looking to build real relationships. They didn’t make interactions feel transactional, and they tried to add value wherever they could. The way they treated people who were supposedly “below” them said more about their character than any title or net worth ever will. One of the best examples: @ylecun

Try to build genuine friendships. Money, power, fame, and even satisfaction follow as byproducts.