Google Gemini AI: Diversity & Inclusivity or Bias & Propaganda?| Roundup #144 | The Startup Operator

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of the Startup Operator Podcast.

[00:00:05] I am Roshan Karyapa and I am Gunjan Sahar and together we break down the biggest headlines

[00:00:10] from India's growing startup ecosystem.

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[00:00:22] In this week's episode, of course, Air India recently released the safety video and that video very beautifully depicts the various dance forms in India. And another aspect of that it's all women.

[00:01:41] Yeah, that's a fantastic, fantastic video really full of activity for the Indian startup ecosystem. The biggest headlines involved by JUZ. On February 23rd, which was last Friday, by JUZ board of directors had called for a special EGM. And in that over 60% of by JUZ shareholders approved resolutions to resolve issues of governance and financial mismanagement.

[00:03:02] One of the key decisions taken was the removal of co-founder and CEO by JUZ Ravindran. and somehow every few weeks or so, I mean, there seems to be another development and Bijus is in the news for the wrong reasons. I don't know if that AGM had quorum and what those ground rules are. But this is sad. I mean, a lookout notice is pretty serious actually, which means to say that he is considered

[00:04:24] as a flight job. So this kind of raises the question is a founder still capable enough of being a CEO when the company is actually a very big company. So it's a great question, right? I mean, very, very few have scaled to being CEOs at that scale, really, to be honest the vision, I think the management team, the leadership and the board. A lot of the times, board is just fancy dressing, but the board becomes really, really important

[00:07:01] because they act as a sort of a moral compass in some way

[00:07:04] to sort of keep the business. And at the same time, I don't think there was another person more mismatched to sort of scale Uber from the time they went IPO and whatnot.

[00:08:21] So yeah, I mean, it's a difficult thing,

[00:08:24] leading companies.

[00:08:25] I mean, it's perhaps the most difficult job in the world,

[00:08:28] I would say. X about Gemini's capabilities, Google wrote, we are working to improve these kinds of depictions immediately. Gemini's AI image generation does generate a wide range of people. And that's generally a good thing because people around the world use it, but it's missing the mark here. Now, in one of the accounts that I follow, Matt Walsh on Twitter, he has put out a very interesting thread as to what could be the reason

[00:09:43] for the AI fathers of America and a bunch of black dudes show up,

[00:11:03] it's severely racist actually, if you think about it. Did his own bunch of research on this right? I mean while we searched for Vikings and so on I mean Well racially correct folks showed up, but then I mean we sure searched for Hindu priests and guess what I mean you know Not a single male showed up right? I mean I

[00:12:20] Don't know so so this is obviously like super imposition of some kind of ideology at a

[00:13:26] eventuality for a company that, you know, we once thought will be responsible for, you know, flying cars and all sorts of things. Right. I mean, I've, I've made the point

[00:13:31] earlier, you know, Google had this moonshots project, which, you know, I would often go

[00:13:36] to the website and see what cool stuff they're up to, you know. And today, I mean, like for

[00:13:41] the first time in about 15 or so years, Thomas Corinne, who is the CEO of your Google Cloud, he tweeted out saying that

[00:15:03] we're introducing a new offering called Gemini offering questionable responses about PM Modi while being circumspect with regard to questions about other world leaders. This comes days after Mr Chandrasekhar said that the draft laws to regulate the AI space would be brought about in June or July this year. So looks like Google really has a lot of fires to doze.

[00:16:23] Yeah, they'll not be charged any commission if they use an external payment gateway. At a later date, Indus will also provide its own in-app billing and catalog solutions, but these will remain strictly optional for app developers. So what do you think? Is this the respite app developers are looking for in India?

[00:17:40] And is this something other countries can emulate?

[00:17:43] Yeah, for sure.

[00:17:43] I mean, it's a good alternative in that sense, right?

[00:17:47] But I don't know how much adoption they will get, right? to negotiate with Epic in the US. And similarly, some of the larger folks here will do the same as well. There's all kind of antitrust implications and so on and so forth. So this is great. I think PhonePay did a great job acquiring in the SOS. They have what I think about 400 million users or so.

[00:19:02] 26 lakh apps.

[00:19:04] Yeah, so if anyone can do it, I'm not very sure. So we might see some kind of regulated public utility system going forward. A lot of these things, I feel like it's all web 2.0-ish. So some of these systems and applications will have to evolve.

[00:20:21] It was great because it increased the pie

[00:20:26] and made services accessible for everyone. But this is not the first time that IRCTC is partnering with any food delivery platform. Last time around October, they announced a partnership with Zomato for ordering and supplying food at different railway stations. Now, I really don't travel by trains very frequently currently, but would you order food through Zomato or Swiggy in a train? Yeah, sure. Why not? I mean...

[00:21:41] For me, the biggest concern would be whatering, right? And I remember the food quality was sorry to say the least, right?

[00:23:03] But recently, again, I was traveling in that same route from Kolkata to New Jalpa Guri Ubar CEO acknowledged the difficulties posed by the Indian market stating quote unquote India is one of the toughest markets out there. They are so demanding and do not pay for anything. If we succeed here, we can succeed anywhere else. Now a lot of media outlets are, you know, just quoting the part where he says they are so demanding and not pay for anything.

[00:24:22] I think that is a bit misquoted.

[00:24:24] I think the real point that he was trying to say is that if we succeed here, we can know, and, you know, 50 bucks in India goes a long, long way. Right. I mean, more than perhaps a dollar would in the, in the US or, you know, a pound would in UK and elsewhere. Right. So, yeah, I mean, props to Uber. I mean, they've kind of stuck it out in India and they've recently turned profitable as well. Right. This collaboration or this, you

[00:25:43] know, being part of the ONDC network could be interesting for them. Right. I mean, they Electric Mobility Company raised $19.25 million from Canadian Auto Parts manufacturer Magna and Bajaj Auto Limited. And Varaha which is a climate tech startup raised $8.7 million from RTP Global, Omnivore, O'Riast Venture Partners and others. There's also Cloud Kitchen aggregator Ghost Kitchens that raised $5 million from Gujarat

[00:27:02] Venture Finance Limited, NV Ventures,, so on and so forth. So you will find a lot of these OEMs, the conventional folks investing in the newer players for sure. And from their perspective, I mean, they're just hedging against the future. I mean, so yeah, I mean, I see this as a win-win.

[00:28:21] So moving on to the talk of the town section, Rajan, you put out a really interesting tweet.

[00:28:25] I would love to get the breakdown of that. like, you know, for example, Shop Clues, Jabong, all of these were funded, man. I mean, they raised, you know, probably like close to 100, 100 something million in funding as well, right. And Jabong, for instance, for instance, was funded by Rocket Internet, right, which was hugely popular German firm, right. So a bunch of these folks tried to start businesses

[00:29:43] because, you know, there was a wide space. And they also saw this as, okay, you know, they just want to think big, they're not just starting a me to business as such. And which is fantastic. I mean, it shows how far we've come really. But also that comes with the generations as well, right? I mean, the PT and slipcarts were probably the first, actually the second generation of starters, I would call first

[00:31:01] would be the Infosys and the likes. And this was a fantastic conversation, right? I really can't wait for you guys to listen in. We'll perhaps publish that sometime early next week. So you guys should definitely check it out. Yeah, and if you want to know when the episode is coming up, do follow us on our social media handles,

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