Govt identifies 20 indigenous AI foundation model proposals under IndiaAI Mission: Parliament
New Delhi, July 22
The government has identified 20 indigenous sovereign Artificial Intelligence model proposals, including 12 Large Language Models and 8 Small Language Models, for support under the IndiaAI Mission, Parliament was informed on Wednesday.
In a written reply in the Lok Sabha, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said the IndiaAI Mission is aimed at creating economic opportunities and employment for youth while addressing risks associated with artificial intelligence.
He stated, "The Government of India is supporting Indian startups and institutions to develop large language models. 20 indigenous sovereign model proposals have been identified for support, comprising 12 LLMs and 8 SLMs."
The minister said India's AI strategy builds on the country's IT sector, which has an annual revenue of USD 300 billion and a workforce of 60 lakh people. The IndiaAI Mission has seven pillars, including development of AI models, applications, datasets, talent development and affordable compute.
Highlighting progress under the Mission, the minister said notable indigenous AI models being supported include Sarvam AI's 30 billion parameter and 105 billion parameter models, Gnani.AI's speech-to-speech model, BharatGen's multilingual foundation models and Avataar AI's video generation model.
He added that domain-specific Small Language Models (SLMs), including specialised models and AI frameworks for healthcare, language technologies and agentic AI systems, are at various stages of development and deployment.
On AI infrastructure, the government said 15 compute service providers have been empanelled under the Mission. A total of 237 projects have been supported, with 93.18 lakh GPU hours sanctioned to enable AI research and development.
The government also said 12 national-level hackathons and innovation challenges have been launched under the Mission. These initiatives have supported the development of 62 AI prototypes and deployment of 20 AI-based solutions.
On talent development, the minister informed Parliament that 686 fellowships have been awarded across undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral programmes in 178 institutions. In addition, the YUVA AI for All programme has been completed by over 26.5 lakh individuals.
The government further said 27 India Data and AI Labs have been established, providing training to more than 2,500 students, while work is underway to establish 188 additional labs.
To strengthen the country's AI ecosystem, the government has also approved a scheme to establish 58 Artificial Intelligence Centres of Excellence (AI-CoEs) across States and Union Territories in collaboration with state governments and industry partners.
The minister also informed Parliament that the India AI Governance Guidelines, released on November 5, 2025, provide a national framework for the safe, responsible and inclusive development and deployment of AI.
— ANI
Reader Comments
As someone working in tech, I'm cautiously optimistic. The IndiaAI Mission has good intentions, but we need to ensure these models are actually deployed and not just lab projects. Let's see the results in 2-3 years.
Very happy to see BharatGen mentioned! Multilingual models for Indian languages are crucial. We have 22 official languages and hundreds of dialects. AI must serve everyone, not just English speakers. 👏
Interesting development. But what about the compute costs? 93 lakh GPU hours sounds impressive, but I wonder if Indian startups can actually afford to use these resources. Hope the infrastructure is truly accessible.
Great to see AI in healthcare and language tech! But I hope these 58 AI Centres of Excellence don't end up like many government schemes - good on paper, but poor implementation. Need strict monitoring and transparency.
This is amazing! 26.5 lakh people trained under YUVA AI for All! That's a huge number. India has the talent, and now we're building the models too. Next step: make sure these AI solutions reach rural areas as well.
The AI Governance Guidelines are crucial. Without proper framework, these models could be misused. Glad to see India focusing on 'safe, responsible and inclusive' development
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