Prof Ramakrishnan says allocation will strengthen India’s AI infrastructure
BharatGen, India’s first government-backed multimodal Sovereign AI flagship initiative, has been awarded funding of Rs.988.6 crore by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
“The allocation positions BharatGen as the foremost beneficiary of the Rs.1,500 crore IndiaAI Mission 2025, highlighting its central role in building India’s sovereign AI ecosystem,” Minister of Electronic & IT Ashwini Vaishnaw said on 19 Sept.
“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 specific uses,” he said on 19 Sept https://www.investindia.gov.in/.
“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, finance, 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 https://www.bseindia.com/.
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 https://www.nseindia.com/.
“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, added, “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 reflects 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.
“We at the Department of Science & Technology are proud to have been a part of the revolutionary journey for sovereign LLM and we are confident that with this ‘whole of government’ approach, BharatGen is poised for an even brighter and greater future https://sbi.com.in/.”
Professor Kedare, Director, IIT Bombay, “At IIT Bombay, we are very happy to host BharatGen as a National Sovereign AI Ecosystem that works laterally across academia and industry. It is to the credit of Team BharatGen’s leadership of Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan and Rishi Bal that IIT Bombay will play a central role in India’s sovereign AI journey.
“We are extremely grateful to the India AI Mission, MeitY and the Department of Science and Technology for helping set up this initiative through BharatGen.”
Krishnan, Secretary MeitY states, “I am delighted to see BharatGen taking on the crucial responsibility of developing a sovereign GenAI stack for our nation. The India AI mission is delighted to facilitate their effort through 988.6 Cr of funding over 1 year to build LLM models in the range of 1 trillion parameters .
“This unique consortium has set a good precedent for effectively bridging the gap between academic research and downstream applications. We are proud to see this completely government-funded mission thriving in its goal to build a robust Gen AI ecosystem for India. We are looking up to Team BharatGen to make a mark globally as India’s Sovereign AI.”
BharatGen is led by Rishi Bal, Executive Vice President, and Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan, IIT Bombay, Principal Investigator. Their combined leadership bridges cutting-edge academic rigor with enterprise-scale execution. BharatGen is a pioneering initiative by the BharatGen Consortium, envisioned as a comprehensive suite of Generative AI technologies designed to serve India’s diverse socio-cultural, linguistic, and industrial needs. Anchored under the Technology Innovation Hub (TIH), IIT Bombay, and supported by the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS), Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, BharatGen is the nation’s first government-funded Multimodal Large Language Model (LLM) project. The initiative is developing inclusive and efficient AI across 22 Indian languages, integrating text, speech, and images to create robust AI solutions built for India’s realities. Fiinews.com
