Making content available across languages has been a key consideration for digital accessibility. While translation systems have continued to evolve, work still needs to be done in three major areas- one, support for more languages; two, support for more natural translation of stylised long-form text; and three, support for structured text in different formats. For this very reason, The Government of India, under the IndiaAI Mission, has selected Sarvam to build India’s sovereign Large Language Model (LLM). In a first-of-its-kind initiative, Sarvam, founded by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, will build an indigenous foundational model from scratch. Capable of reasoning, designed for voice, and fluent in Indian languages, the model will be ready for secure, population-scale deployment.
The Future of AI in India
Sarvam is dedicated to building the bedrock of Sovereign AI for India. Generative AI is a fundamental driver of societal and economic progress. This technology will rapidly improve and pervade increasingly larger spheres of our personal, professional, and political lives. It focuses on 22 Scheduled Indian languages, with an emphasis on more natural translation while supporting long-form structured content. What started as a research lab has evolved into a full-stack Sovereign AI platform that empowers governments, enterprises, and nonprofits to use GenAI solutions effectively.
Meet the Founders
Dr. Vivek Raghavan, Co-founder of Sarvam, said, “We are humbled by the responsibility bestowed upon us to build India’s sovereign model, and we are ready to build AI that reaches every corner of the country. This is a crucial step toward building critical national AI infrastructure. Our goal is to build multi-modal, multi-scale foundation models from scratch. When we do, a universe of applications unfolds. For citizens, this means interacting with AI that feels familiar, not foreign. For enterprises, this means unlocking intelligence without sending their data beyond borders.”
He holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a B. Tech. from IIT Delhi. He is a leading entrepreneur, technologist and builder of digital public infrastructure. Pratyush Kumar, co-founder, holding a Ph.D. from ETH Zurich and a B.Tech. from IIT Bombay is also on a mission to democratize the impact of genAI at scale. He said,
“Building an AI ecosystem for India has always been core to Sarvam’s mission, where our research, technology, and models empower builders to create solutions for the country. As part of the Sovereign LLM proposal, we are developing three model variants: Sarvam-Large for advanced reasoning and generation, Sarvam-Small for real-time interactive applications, and Sarvam-Edge for compact on-device tasks. We are collaborating with AI4Bharat at IIT Madras, a leader in Indian language AI research, to build these models. Driving this effort is a best-in-class team at Sarvam that understands the depth and complexity of AI development like few others.”
Why we are the perfect fit
Sarvam is especially integral to India as it has established a unique government-led template in building digital public goods like Aadhaar and UPI, platforms that serve over a billion people with speed, trust, and scale. It sets the stage to lead in building population-scale AI systems. India also has one of the world’s fastest-growing developer communities and a deep bench of AI researchers and engineers. With the right focus on technology enablement and market access, this talent base can build the country and the world.
Lastly, Indian enterprises, with their strong focus on ROI and value creation, can collaborate with AI innovators to build a diverse range of high-impact AI products. Today, Sarvam is trusted by leading enterprises and institutions including UIDAI, Neowise, Urban Company, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, and NITI Aayog. Sarvam is backed by top investors including Lightspeed, Peak XV, and Khosla Ventures.
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