Meity Shortlists Four Startups In ₹10,000 Crore Ai Push; Official Announcement Expected Soon

India is group to powerfulness its indigenous AI ambitions done its ₹10,000 crore IndiaAI Mission, pinch nan Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) preparing to formally backmost 4 homegrown startups—Sarvam AI, Soket AI Labs, Gnani.ai, and Gan.ai—for nan improvement of Indian AI foundational models, according to a study by The Economic Times.

The shortlisted companies are expected to beryllium portion of nan first tranche nether nan government’s multi-tiered strategy to build Large Language Models (LLMs) tailored to India’s linguistic and integer diversity.

Among nan selected startups, Soket AI Labs has projected nan EKA Project, a 120-billion parameter open-source Indic LLM trained connected 2 trillion tokens. CEO Abhishek Upperwal confirmed nan submission to AIM, stating, “Ours is simply a 12-month proposal, but we are looking to person aggregate mini models successful nan adjacent six months.” The backing amount, however, remains undisclosed.

Meanwhile, Sarvam AI is moving connected a 70-billion parameter multimodal AI exemplary supporting some Indian languages and English. The institution is expected to person GPU compute resources worthy ₹200 crore alternatively of nonstop financial grants, arsenic portion of MeitY’s strategical assets allocation.

Startups Gnani.ai and Gan.ai person submitted proposals for smaller-scale connection models. While Gnani.ai declined to comment, CEO Ganesh Gopalan antecedently confirmed that nan institution is focused connected processing speech-to-speech models for Indic languages. Co-founder Ananth Nagaraj is portion of nan IndiaAI Mission’s draught argumentation team, lending nan startup deeper engagement successful nan initiative.

The move comes amid increasing geopolitical urgency, spurred by China’s DeepSeek AI model, which gained world attraction earlier this year. India’s authorities has since accelerated efforts to create indigenous AI infrastructure.

Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had earlier stated, “Very soon we will person our ain LLM,” signalling nan country’s resoluteness to drawback up pinch world GenAI leaders.

By February 15, MeitY received 67 applications, followed by different 120 successful March, for its ₹1,500 crore inducement strategy for foundational exemplary development. Final selections are expected to beryllium announced imminently.

In tandem, MeitY is building a centralised compute infrastructure, partnering pinch 10 GPU-as-a-service providers including Jio, Yotta, CtrlS, Tata Communications, and NxtGen. This unreality infrastructure intends to connection GPU entree astatine sub-$1/hour rates, making it 1 of nan world’s astir affordable compute platforms.

Published on: Apr 25, 2025 2:27 PM IST