BharatGen Hits Key Milestones: Inside India’s Advancing Sovereign AI Initiative

In the high-stakes arena of artificial intelligence, where Silicon Valley titans like OpenAI and Google have long set the pace, India is quietly scripting its own ambitious narrative. Enter BharatGen: the nation’s inaugural sovereign multilingual and multimodal large language model (LLM), a ₹1,293 crore ($155 million) bet on digital self-reliance that’s capturing the attention of tech investors and policymakers alike.

Launched amid fanfare in October 2024 and recently hailed by Union Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh during a pivotal visit to IIT Bombay, this initiative isn’t just about catching up—it’s about redefining AI through an Indian lens, blending linguistic diversity with real-world applications in agriculture, governance, and beyond.

BharatGen is India’s first sovereign effort to create a Large Language Model that truly reflects the linguistic, cultural and social diversity of the nation. Built to support over twenty-two Indian languages, BharatGen integrates ...