• The two companies joined forces to develop Garuda, a large language model (LLM) to preserve the Indonesian language and its dialects, supporting linguistic diversity and cultural heritage.
• Garuda’s unique features will enable various applications across industries, including health care, e-commerce, education and finance, enhancing customer support, experience and content creation, thereby fostering digital inclusion and accessibility.
• The partnership underscores the commitment to Indonesia’s digital transformation, aligning with the vision of Golden Indonesia 2045, by leveraging AI infrastructure and human capital readiness to drive innovation, create opportunities and promote linguistic diversity, thus contributing to the nation’s socio-economic development.

Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (Indosat or IOH), the most preferred digital telecommunications company in Indonesia, and Tech Mahindra, a leading provider of digital transformation, consulting and business re-engineering solutions and services, today announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024 to build Garuda, a large language model (LLM) to preserve the Indonesian language and its dialects. Garuda will be built on the principles of Tech Mahindra's indigenous LLM Project Indus, a foundational model designed to converse in a multitude of Indic languages and dialects.

The unique features of Garuda will create multiple use cases and enable Indosat's customers to leverage various applications, including customer support, experience and content creation across industries such as health care, e-commerce, rural education, banking and finance, agriculture and telecoms. The model will offer personalized customer experiences by analyzing sentiment and understanding behavioral patterns, resulting in flexible learning based on customers' previous interactions. As part of this partnership, Tech Mahindra will leverage its technology expertise to gather and curate data in the Indonesian language, which will be pre-trained and released as a conversational model for Indosat.

“We are excited to collaborate with Tech Mahindra on the Garuda project, which aligns perfectly with Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison's larger purpose of connecting and empowering every Indonesian. By preserving the Indonesian language and its dialects through advanced technology, we promote linguistic diversity and enhance accessibility and inclusivity in the digital realm. This partnership underscores our commitment to Indonesia's digital transformation and the vision of Golden Indonesia 2045. Together, we are leveraging AI infrastructure and human capital readiness to drive innovation, create meaningful experiences and unlock new opportunities for socio-economic growth nationwide,” said Vikram Sinha, President Director and Chief Executive  Officer of Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison.

Garuda will be developed with 16 billion original Indonesian tokens, providing 1.2 billion parameters to shape the model's understanding of the Indonesian language. These parameters will influence how the model processes input and formulates output. A beta version of the Garuda model will be released for testing by Indosat and Indonesian-language speakers. The model will be further improved using reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) techniques to ensure its robustness for conversation. Additionally, any specialized use cases will be developed using the less is more for alignment (LIMA) method.

“The LLM market is expected to reach US$40.8 billion by 2029. In this direction, the emergence of LLMs such as Garuda and Indus can enable people and enterprises to communicate online in their local dialects and languages, creating new opportunities in the digital world. We are delighted to partner with Indosat on the Garuda project, which will bring about a transformative impact by providing personalized experiences for the people of Indonesia. We believe that the model will significantly promote Indonesia's linguistic diversity and unlock new business opportunities for enterprises in the region,” said Harshvendra Soin, President, Asia Pacific and Japan Business, Tech Mahindra.

This partnership represents a strategic alliance between Indosat and Tech Mahindra, aligning their strengths to drive technological innovation in Indonesia. The joint endeavor signifies a shared vision to revolutionize language-understanding technology, contributing to the preservation of linguistic diversity and advancing communication solutions tailored to the unique needs of the Indonesian market.

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