Inside IndiaAI Mission’s Plan To Build Indigenous AI Model

Inside IndiaAI Mission’s Plan To Build Indigenous AI Model

SUMMARY

IndiaAI Mission has invited applications from Indian startups, researchers, and entrepreneurs to collaborate on building an Indian foundational AI models

The submitted applications for building LLMs will be shortlisted on factors such as innovativeness, scalability, financial viability, among others

The proposal envisages offering both direct as well as equity-based funding for the selected entity(s) that will undertake this mammoth task

The launch of its latest reasoning models, DeepSeek-R1 and DeepSeek-R1-Zero, by Chinese AI company DeepSeek, earlier this month, upended the AI ecosystem globally. It also put a question mark on OpenAI’s arguable leadership in the space.

Without relying heavily on high-end graphics processing units (GPUs), DeepSeek managed to surpass existing closed source models on all key benchmarks. While the Chinese company managed to achieve this feat in just $6 Mn, OpenAI spent $100 Mn over the years to build its AI model GPT-4.

Back home in India, the emergence of DeepSeek raised curiosity, ignited hopes that India can also build such models, and led to a debate on the need to have domestic foundation models. Amid all these, Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that India would host DeepSeek on local servers. Along with this, the minister also announced that India would build its own large language model (LLM)

Not long after, Centre’s flagship IndiaAI Mission floated a proposal inviting applications from Indian startups, researchers, and entrepreneurs to collaborate on building foundational AI models trained on Indian datasets.

“This initiative aims to establish indigenous AI models that align with global standards while addressing unique challenges and opportunities within the Indian context,” reads the proposal.

However, what is interesting about the proposal is that the Centre will offer both direct as well as equity-based funding for the selected entity(s) that will undertake this mammoth task. 

At the outset, under the direct funding route, the IndiaAI Mission will offer “milestone-based disbursements” in the form of a direct grant and compute credits for AI Compute. Thereafter, IndiaAI Mission may also infuse further funding into the selected entity(s) by “take equity through mechanisms that will be finalised through mutual consent and agreement”.

That said, the proposal outlines several key objectives for the potential state-backed LLM:

  • The foundational model should be trained on diverse and representative Indian datasets
  • The LLM should demonstrate capabilities to address India-specific challenges and opportunities across sectors
  • It should also support creative and scalable use cases with measurable societal and economic impact
  • The potential AI model should also incorporate mechanisms for bias mitigation, fairness, and ethical AI principles

The intellectual property (IP) for the envisioned AI model will remain with the developer entity(s). However, there will be a provision of a perpetual licence for use by the government for public use.

How Will The Project Be Evaluated?

As per the proposal floated by the IndiaAI Mission, the submitted applications for building LLMs will be shortlisted on multiple factors, including innovativeness of the approach, scalability and sustainability, financial viability, ethical considerations, among others. 

Besides, the Centre will also select applicants based on the capability of the teams, feasibility and impact of the proposed applications.

As per a blog post on IndiaAI website, the submitted proposals will be reviewed by a panel of experts and then the shortlisted applicants will be invited for a detailed presentation. 

This follows IT minister Vaishnaw saying that the government has also selected 10 companies to supply 18,693 GPUs. This AI compute is also expected to be available to the startups that set out to develop an indigenously-built LLM.

While it remains to be seen whether the potential foundational AI model sees the light of the day, hopes hinge on the frugality, innovativeness and talent pool of India’s startup ecosystem. 

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