Sarvam AI Launches Indus Chatbot
What happened
Indian AI firm Sarvam has publicly launched Indus AI Chat, a multilingual chatbot for Indian users on Android and iOS. The app is positioned as a homegrown alternative to global platforms, with a focus on strong Indic language support and locally relevant contextual answers. The launch is part of a broader trend of Indian startups building AI models tailored for the domestic market.
Why it matters
- The company was founded in July 2023 by Dr. Vivek Raghavan, who has extensive experience building India's digital public infrastructure like Aadhaar, and Dr. Pratyush Kumar, who has a background in open-source AI for Indian languages at AI4Bharat and has worked at Microsoft Research and IBM Research. - Sarvam AI secured $41 million in a Series A funding round in December 2023, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Peak XV Partners and Khosla Ventures. This was the largest Series A funding for an Indian AI startup at the time. - Before the consumer-facing Indus Chatbot, Sarvam AI released OpenHathi-Hi-v0.1 in December 2023, an open-source Hindi Large Language Model based on Meta's Llama2-7B architecture, which is available on Hugging Face for developers to build upon. - The Indus chatbot is likely powered by one of Sarvam's recently announced foundational models, Sarvam-30B or Sarvam-105B, which were built from the ground up in India. The company trained these models using 4,000 GPUs over six months with a team of around 40 researchers. - In addition to language models, the company is developing a full stack of AI solutions, including "Saaras" for speech-to-text, "Sarvam Vision" for document understanding in Indian scripts, and "Sarvam Edge" to allow AI models to run locally on devices without an internet connection. - The company is a key player in the IndiaAI Mission and was selected by the government to help develop India's sovereign large language model, granting it access to government-supported compute infrastructure. - Beyond the chatbot, Sarvam AI is also developing hardware, having showcased "Sarvam Kaze," AI-powered wearable glasses that support over 10 Indian languages for voice-based interaction. - Sarvam's business strategy includes a direct sales approach to co-develop domain-specific models with enterprises and government bodies, rather than just focusing on a free consumer chatbot.
Key numbers
- - The company was founded in July 2023 by Dr.
- Pratyush Kumar, who has a background in open-source AI for Indian languages at AI4Bharat and has worked at Microsoft Research and IBM Research.
- Sarvam AI secured $41 million in a Series A funding round in December 2023, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Peak XV Partners and Khosla Ventures.
- Before the consumer-facing Indus Chatbot, Sarvam AI released OpenHathi-Hi-v0.1 in December 2023, an open-source Hindi Large Language Model based on Meta's Llama2-7B architecture, which is available on Hugging Face for developers to build upon.
What happens next
- The launch is part of a broader trend of Indian startups building AI models tailored for the domestic market.
Quick answers
What happened in Sarvam AI Launches Indus Chatbot?
Indian AI firm Sarvam has publicly launched Indus AI Chat, a multilingual chatbot for Indian users on Android and iOS. The app is positioned as a homegrown alternative to global platforms, with a focus on strong Indic language support and locally relevant contextual answers. The launch is part of a broader trend of Indian startups building AI models tailored for the domestic market.
Why does Sarvam AI Launches Indus Chatbot matter?
The company was founded in July 2023 by Dr. Vivek Raghavan, who has extensive experience building India's digital public infrastructure like Aadhaar, and Dr. Pratyush Kumar, who has a background in open-source AI for Indian languages at AI4Bharat and has worked at Microsoft Research and IBM Research. Sarvam AI secured $41 million in a Series A funding round in December 2023, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Peak XV Partners and Khosla Ventures. This was the largest Series A funding for an Indian AI startup at the time. Before the consumer-facing Indus Chatbot, Sarvam AI released OpenHathi-Hi-v0.1 in December 2023, an open-source Hindi Large Language Model based on Meta's Llama2-7B architecture, which is available on Hugging Face for developers to build upon. The Indus chatbot is likely powered by one of Sarvam's recently announced foundational models, Sarvam-30B or Sarvam-105B, which were built from the ground up in India. The company trained these models using 4,000 GPUs over six months with a team of around 40 researchers. In addition to language models, the company is developing a full stack of AI solutions, including "Saaras" for speech-to-text, "Sarvam Vision" for document understanding in Indian scripts, and "Sarvam Edge" to allow AI models to run locally on devices without an internet connection. The company is a key player in the IndiaAI Mission and was selected by the government to help develop India's sovereign large language model, granting it access to government-supported compute infrastructure. Beyond the chatbot, Sarvam AI is also developing hardware, having showcased "Sarvam Kaze," AI-powered wearable glasses that support over 10 Indian languages for voice-based interaction. Sarvam's business strategy includes a direct sales approach to co-develop domain-specific models with enterprises and government bodies, rather than just focusing on a free consumer chatbot.
