Ashwini Vaishnaw Announces Sarvam AI To Develop India's First GenAI Platform; CEO Says Will Be Ready In 6 Months

On Saturday, the government announced the selection of Sarvam AI to build the country’s first homegrown AI foundational model.

While releasing the guidelines for the ECMS scheme, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw disclosed that out of the 67 proposals received, Sarvam AI is the first startup shortlisted to develop India’s first indigenous foundational model.

He shared that in the due course, 2-3 more startups will join the programme.

“The ECMS is a horizontal scheme. It will feed into various sectors, electronic, automotive and so on,” the Minister remarked.

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About startup Sarvam AI

Founded in July 2023 by Dr. Vivek Raghavan and Dr. Pratyush Kumar, Sarvam develops a full-stack offering for Generative AI, ranging from research-led innovations in training custom AI models to an enterprise-grade platform for authoring and deployment of GenAI apps to make them significantly robust, performant, and cost-effective in India.

Dr. Raghavan 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 an entrepreneur and technologist who was behind Digital Public Goods (DPGs) like Aadhaar. 

Dr. Pratyush Kumar holds a Ph.D. from ETH Zurich and a B.Tech. from IIT Bombay. He is an AI and systems engineering researcher with tenure at Microsoft Research, IBM Research, and IIT Madras. He co-founded AI4Bharat, pioneering Indian language AI applications, and PadhAI, introducing deep learning to thousands of students.

Dr. Raghavan said that Sarvam will develop India's first AI platform in six months.

It will work with Indian enterprises to co-develop domain-specific AI models utilising their data. [Source: Money Control]

Official announcement

It's official 🇮🇳

We're proud to announce that Sarvam has been selected by the Government of India under the IndiaAI Mission to build India's sovereign Large Language Model.

Building India's sovereign model from the ground up is a crucial step toward Atmanirbhar Bharat. The… pic.twitter.com/nA4WgQ0aw0

— Sarvam AI (@SarvamAI) April 26, 2025

Sarvam AI raised $41 million in its Series A funding round in December 2023, from Lightspeed Ventures, Peak XV Partners and Khosla Ventures.

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