In a significant move to bolster India’s artificial intelligence capabilities, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is set to back four homegrown startups—Sarvam AI, Soket AI Labs, Gnani.ai, and Gan.ai—under the ambitious ₹10,000 crore IndiaAI Mission, according to a report by The Economic Times. The official announcement is expected shortly, with Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw likely to make the declaration.

This initiative forms part of India’s broader strategy to develop indigenous AI foundational models and infrastructure, ensuring the country keeps pace with global advancements in artificial intelligence. The selected startups will lead the first wave of efforts to create Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal AI systems suited to India’s linguistic and cultural diversity.

Sarvam AI, one of the shortlisted companies, has already commenced work on a 70-billion parameter multimodal AI model designed to understand both Indian languages and English. Instead of direct financial grants, Sarvam AI is anticipated to receive GPU compute credits valued at ₹200 crore, reflecting MeitY’s approach of providing strategic infrastructure support to promising projects.

Similarly, Soket AI Labs has proposed the EKA Project, a 120-billion parameter open-source Indic LLM, trained on two trillion tokens. The project, led by CEO Abhishek Upperwal, is structured as a 12-month plan, with the expectation of delivering smaller models within the first six months. While the exact funding details for Soket AI Labs remain undisclosed, the project’s scale underscores its potential significance for India’s AI ecosystem.

Meanwhile, Gnani.ai and Gan.ai have submitted proposals focusing on smaller-scale language models. Gan.ai’s CEO, Ganesh Gopalan, has previously indicated that their efforts are centred around building speech-to-speech models specifically for Indic languages. Co-founder Ananth Nagaraj’s involvement in the IndiaAI Mission’s draft policy team further highlights the startup’s strategic alignment with the government’s vision.

This selection comes at a time of heightened urgency within India’s AI sector, particularly following the global recognition of China’s DeepSeek AI model earlier this year. In response, India has accelerated its initiatives to foster homegrown AI innovations and reduce dependence on foreign technologies.

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To complement these efforts, MeitY had earlier launched a ₹1,500 crore incentive scheme to encourage individuals and organisations to develop foundational AI models. The ministry received an enthusiastic response, with 67 applications submitted by February 15, followed by another 120 in March. Final selections under this scheme are expected to be announced soon.

Additionally, MeitY is working to strengthen the national AI infrastructure by onboarding 10 GPU-as-a-service providers, including Jio, Yotta, CtrlS, Tata Communications, and NxtGen. This initiative aims to offer affordable GPU access at rates below $1 per hour, making India one of the most cost-effective global destinations for AI compute resources.

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