NEW DELHI, Sept 19: BharatGen, India’s frst government-backed multimodal Sovereign AI fagship initiative, has been awarded funding of Rs. 988.6 crore by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The formal announcement was made by Hon’ble Union Minister of Electronics G IT, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw, during an event at Hotel The Ashok, New Delhi.
The allocation positions BharatGen as the foremost benefciary of the Rs. 1,500 crore IndiaAI Mission 2025, highlighting its central role in building India’s sovereign AI ecosystem.
The funding will help BharatGen create powerful AI models, including Large Language and Multimodal Models with up to one trillion parameters, as well as smaller models designed for specifc uses. It will also boost the development of India-focused technologies like text-to-speech, speech recognition, and vision-language tools.
The models are expected to support real-world applications across key areas such as agriculture, governance, fnance, healthcare, and education. To make this possible, BharatGen will train the models on advanced supercomputing clusters, while also setting aside resources for other essential needs.
Earlier this year, BharatGen launched Param-1, a bilingual LLM with 2.9 billion parameters, pretrained on 5 trillion tokens in English and Hindi. The next phase will expand to multilingual and multimodal AI systems across all 22 scheduled Indian languages, ensuring equitable access for every citizen. The BharatGen consortium includes leading institutions such as IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, IIIT Hyderabad, IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Mandi, IIM Indore, IIIT Delhi, and IIT Kharagpur, strengthening the mission’s collaborative foundation.
Sharing his excitement on the announcement, Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan, IIT Bombay & Principal Investigator stated, “The allocation will empower BharatGen to advance its foundational models, strengthen India’s AI infrastructure, drive enterprise adoption, and enable developers through our Sovereign AI stack, while ensuring inclusive access across the country’s diverse linguistic and cultural landscape. As a national sovereign AI ecosystem, BharatGen brings together a consortium of dedicated faculty members committed to this vision.”
Commenting on the development, Rishi Bal, Executive Vice President, BharatGen stated, “This landmark allocation by MeitY signals India’s resolve to build sovereign AI at scale. With BharatGen, we are laying the foundations of an AI ecosystem that refects the diversity of our nation while advancing India’s leadership in the global technology landscape.”
Prof Abhay Karandikar, Secretary DST also expressed his enthusiasm, “I extend my heartfelt congratulations to the entire BharatGen team for this well-deserved support by India AI Mission for scaling the technology. It’s truly inspiring to witness the remarkable scale and speed of the progress that the BharatGen team has achieved. (PTI )
Follow our WhatsApp channel
