The union minister of state (independent charge) for Science and Technology; Earth Sciences and minister of state for PMO, department of Atomic Energy, department of Space, Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions has hailed “BharatGen” as India’s first sovereign multilingual and multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) driven large language model (LLM).
The minister was briefed that BharatGen is India’s first sovereign effort to create a LLM that truly reflects the linguistic, cultural and social diversity of the nation. Built to support over 22 Indian languages, BharatGen integrates three major modalities- text, speech and document vision, so that it can understand, generate and interpret information in the same way Indian citizens naturally communicate. The minister was told that this mission has been conceived in the spirit of building an inclusive digital future, where every Indian language, dialect and regional context is represented in the country’s AI capabilities. Meanwhile, the presentation highlighted that BharatGen is supported under the National Mission on interdisciplinary cyber-physical systems (NM-ICPS) of the department of Science and Technology, with Rs 2.35 billion being channelled through the technology innovation hub at IIT Bombay. The consortium, led by IIT Bombay, includes other institutions such as IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur, IIIT Hyderabad, IIT Mandi, IIT Hyderabad, IIM Indore, IIT Kharagpur and IIIT Delhi. He noted that the coming together of such institutions signals a new era of collaborative, mission-driven research, and reflects India’s growing strength in deep-tech innovation.
Further, a key component of BharatGen, Bharat Data Sagar, was explained as one of the most ambitious data initiatives undertaken in the country. The minister was informed that Bharat Data Sagar is being developed to ensure India’s complete ownership and control over its digital knowledge resources. Through large-scale, India-centric data collection and curation, involving individuals, institutions and organisations across sectors, the initiative aims to build datasets that capture India’s lived realities, cultural nuance, and regional diversity. This ensures not only accurate AI performance but also strengthens India’s long-term digital sovereignty.
The minister reviewed the BharatGen models released so far. The team presented Param-1, a foundational text model of 2.9 billion parameters trained on 7.5 trillion tokens, with over one-third of the training data representing Indian content. BharatGen has also built speech models such as Shrutam, a 30-million-parameter automatic speech recognition system, and Sooktam, a 150-million-parameter text-to-speech model available in nine Indic languages. Additionally, the project has delivered Patram, India’s first document-vision model with seven billion parameters, trained on 2.5 billion tokens, designed to understand and interpret complex documents in Indian formats. The minister appreciated that these models together create a complete AI stack for India- text, speech and vision, capable of supporting governance, industry, education, agriculture, healthcare and digital inclusion.
Furthermore, during the interaction, the team demonstrated proof-of-concept applications built on BharatGen. These included Krishi Sathi, a voice-enabled WhatsApp advisory tool that allows farmers to ask questions in their own language and receive instant support; e-VikrAI, which can automatically generate product descriptions from a single image to help small sellers expand their digital presence; and Docbodh, a document question and answer (Q&A) platform powered by Patram that makes complex texts understandable for citizens. The minister observed that such applications clearly show how AI can directly improve everyday life and make public services more accessible to people at the last mile.
The team informed the minister that BharatGen is being strengthened through deep industry partnerships with IBM, Zoho, NASSCOM and several ministries, including the Ministry of Water and Sanitation (WASH), as well as with state governments. These collaborations bring together India’s domain expertise, local datasets, and sector-specific challenges, enabling BharatGen to evolve into a scalable, deployable and impactful AI ecosystem for the country. It was also highlighted that BharatGen has recently received additional support of Rs 10.58 billion from MeitY under the India AI Mission, expanding it into a nationwide effort to build India’s sovereign AI stack. The minister remarked that such missions demonstrate India’s readiness to drive the next wave of digital transformation, and reaffirm the country’s ability to lead in sectors such as AI, quantum, space, cyber-physical systems, and deep technology.
The minister appreciated the scale, ambition, and technical depth of the BharatGen initiative, describing it as a turning point in India’s journey toward technological self-reliance. He said that BharatGen is not just a technological project but a national effort to ensure that the future of AI reflects the aspirations, languages and lived experiences of 1.4 billion Indians. He also emphasised that initiatives like BharatGen embody the prime minister’s vision of empowering every citizen through science and technology, building systems that are inclusive, trustworthy, and locally grounded, and ensuring that India’s digital narrative is written by Indians themselves.
The minister concluded by encouraging the BharatGen team to continue building models that are globally benchmarked yet uniquely Indian, scalable yet accessible, and technologically advanced yet simple enough for citizens to benefit from. He said that BharatGen will play a defining role in shaping India’s digital decade and enabling the country to contribute meaningfully to the global AI landscape.
