The electronics and information technology ministry (MeitY), as part of the ambitious ₹10,000 crore IndiaAI Mission project, has decided to back Sarvam AI, Soket AI Labs, Gnani.ai, and Gan.ai as the first four shortlisted startups for building Indian AI models, according to a report by The Economic Times.
Soket AI Labs CEO Abhishek Upperwal confirmed to AIM that the company has proposed to develop a 120-billion parameter open-source Indic LLM, trained on 2 trillion tokens, under its ‘EKA Project’. While not disclosing the funding sought, he said that four startups have been shortlisted.
“Ours is a 12-month proposal, but we are looking to have multiple small models in the next six months,” Upperwal said.
Meanwhile, Gnani.ai and Gan.ai have submitted proposals to build smaller language models. Gnani.ai refused to comment on this until an official communication from the government.
In an earlier conversation with AIM, Gnani.ai CEO Ganesh Gopalan confirmed that his firm is building speech-to-speech models for Indic languages, and his co-founder Ananth Nagaraj was part of IndiaAI Mission’s draft policy.
“We are committed to being a part of this journey, and I think this is a step in the right direction,” Gopalan said.
Sarvam AI had earlier proposed the development of a 70-billion parameter multimodal AI model that supports both Indian languages and English, and work on it has already begun. Sarvam AI is likely to receive GPU compute power valued at ₹200 crore, instead of direct monetary grants. The ministry is expected to formally announce the selected firms within days, with Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw likely to make the official declaration.
The selection drive follows heightened urgency in India’s AI ecosystem after China’s DeepSeek AI model made headlines earlier this year, prompting the government to accelerate indigenous foundational model development.
MeitY had announced a ₹1,500 crore incentive fund for individuals and organisations building AI models from scratch. By February 15, the ministry received 67 applications, followed by an additional 120 in March.
“Very soon we will have our own LLM,” Vaishnaw had previously stated. It seems like the plan is taking shape.
While several AI startups had submitted proposals under this scheme, AIM earlier found players such as Sarvam AI, Krutrim, CoRover.ai, Zoho, LossFunk, Kissan AI, Soket AI Labs, TurboML, and IIIT Hyderabad were also in the race to develop India’s next GenAI models under the mission.
In parallel, MeitY has also onboarded 10 GPU-as-a-service providers to establish a centralised compute infrastructure, which includes Jio, Yotta, CtrlS, Tata Communications, NxtGen, amongst others. The service aims to offer GPU access at rates below $1 per hour, among the most affordable globally.
