Battle of the bots: Indian startup Sarvam challenges global AI giants with ‘Indus’

"Indus is powered by our 105B sovereign model. It is significantly smaller than the frontier models powering global consumer chat applications today," the Indian firm said in its blog post.

The company said it is currently focussing on accuracy, usefulness, efficiency, and alignment for the Indian context before training bigger foundational models.

"True AI sovereignty means building the full stack of technology from the ground up. The first step was to build foundational models from scratch in India. Indus is the next step to demonstrate that India can also own the data and interface layers," the company said.

The blogpost said: "This is an early release. Indus is evolving, and we’re improving it every day. Your feedback will directly shape what it becomes. We’re gradually rolling out on a limited compute capacity, so you may hit a waitlist at first, we will expand access as soon as possible."

Meanwhile, the Indian government said Sarvam AI stands out as one of the 12 organisations selected under the Innovation Centre pillar of the IndiaAI Mission to develop indigenous foundational models, with financial and compute support amounting to ₹246.72 crore.

The company is building large language and speech models (LLMs) tailored for Indian languages and public service delivery, with capabilities such as voice-based interfaces, document processing, and citizen-centric applications that enhance accessibility and ease of use.

By developing homegrown AI models aligned with national objectives, Sarvam AI is reducing reliance on foreign AI systems while strengthening the open-source ecosystem and enabling innovation across startups, academia, research institutions, and industry.