New Delhi: The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) is set to support four startups, Sarvam AI, Soket AI Labs, Gnani.ai and Gan.ai, as the first batch of companies selected under the ambitious Rs 10,000 crore IndiaAI Mission, aimed at bolstering the indigenous development of foundational AI models, according to recent reports.
It was stated that Soket AI Labs has proposed developing a massive 120-billion parameter open-source Indic large language model (LLM) under its ‘EKA Project’. While the funding details remain undisclosed, the model is expected to be trained on two trillion tokens. Sarvam AI, which has already begun work on a 70-billion parameter multimodal model supporting Indian languages and English, is likely to receive GPU computing resources worth Rs 200 crore instead of direct funding.
Meanwhile, Bengaluru-based Gnani.ai and Gan.ai have submitted proposals for smaller-scale language models. Gnani.ai has prior experience in building speech-to-speech models for Indic languages, and its co-founder, Ananth Nagaraj was involved in drafting the IndiaAI Mission’s policy framework.
An official announcement naming the selected firms is expected soon, likely to be made by Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. The initiative gained urgency following China’s DeepSeek AI launch, pushing India to accelerate the development of homegrown AI capabilities.
MeitY had earlier announced a Rs 1,500 crore incentive fund for individuals and organisations building AI models from scratch. As of mid-February, 67 proposals had been received, followed by another 120 in March. In addition, the ministry has partnered with 10 GPU-as-a-service providers, including Jio, Yotta, CtrlS, Tata Communications, and NxtGen, to offer AI developers compute access at rates below $1 per hour, positioning it among the most cost-effective globally.
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