Lightspeed Leads $41 Mn Funding Round In 5-Month-Old Sarvam AI For Its Full Stack GenAI Suite

Bengaluru-based Sarvam AI, a startup in the generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) space, has raised Series A funding of $41 Mn (around INR 342 Cr) led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

The round also saw participation from Peak XV Partners (erstwhile Sequoia India and Southeast Asia) and Khosla Ventures.

The startup plans to deploy the fresh proceeds to build a full-stack for GenAI ranging from research-led innovations in custom AI model training to an enterprise-grade platform for authoring and deployment.

Founded in July 2023 by AI4Bharat creators – Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar – Sarvam aims to develop custom-made large language models (LLMs), specifically designed for India-centric use cases. 

The company partners with Indian enterprises to develop domain-specific AI models based on their data. Besides, it aims to integrate GenAI into the India stack for public goods applications.

“…India has demonstrated that it can harness technology differently, and with GenAI we have an opportunity to reimagine how this technology can add value to people’s lives,” said Raghavan.

“We see several countries having sovereign efforts to build GenAI models given its strategic importance. We need companies like Sarvam AI to develop deep expertise for building AI in and for India,” said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures.

As per an Inc42 report, “India’s Generative AI Startup Landscape, 2023”, the generative AI market in India is poised to see a substantial increase from $1.1 Bn in 2023 to over $17 Bn by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 48%.

India currently boasts over 70 generative AI startups. These startups have collectively secured more than $440 Mn in funding between 2019 and the third quarter of 2023.

For the past several years, AI firms in India have been creating waves, while adopting several technology stacks, disrupting the startup landscape. One such initiative is generativeAI (GenAI). GenAl is a type of artificial intelligence technology that can create artefacts such as image, text, audio, video, and various forms of multi-modal content. 

This year also saw Indian startups adopting GenAI to step up their offering and features. For example, Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal is looking to launch an AI-as-a-service startup, while eyewear brand Lenskart acquired AI-powered analytics startup Tango Eye in October. 

India’s GenAI space has also been gaining traction from global investors. For instance, internet giant Google recently invested $500K in Indian conversational AI startup Corover.

Now, considering the official launch of BharatGPT in the coming weeks, Google is reportedly planning an additional $4 Mn investment in equity.

BharatGPT is an Indian GenAI platform, launched by CoRover.ai, the Conversational AI Platform. It is available across channels in more than 12 Indian languages, in video, voice and text.