Sarvam, Gnani Likely To Get Incentives For Building AI Models: Report

SUMMARY

The government is expected to finalise the “first set” of proposals for building indigenous foundational AI models this month

Sarvam AI is likely to receive graphics processing unit (GPU) compute power worth INR 200 Cr from the Centre for free

“We did apply for the IndiaAI proposal but haven’t received any confirmation yet. Waiting for IndiaAI to get back to us,” Soket AI Labs told Inc42

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) may offer incentives to startups such as Sarvam AI, Soket AI Labs, Gnani.ai and Gan.ai for building frontier AI models under the IndiaAI Mission.

The government is looking to finalise the “first set” of proposals for building indigenous foundational AI models this month.

An ET report, citing sources, said that Sarvam AI is likely to receive graphics processing unit (GPU) compute power worth INR 200 Cr from the Centre for free.

IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw may announce the final list of awardees in the first set in the next few days.

“The committee has almost finalised the names. It should be announced soon,” an official told ET.

Sarvam had pitched to develop a 70-Bn parameter multimodal AI model which supports Indian languages along with English, said a person privy to the decision.

Inc42 has reached out to Sarvam AI and Soket AI Labs for comments on the development.

While we haven’t heard from Sarvam AI till the time of publishing, Soket AI Labs said that they haven’t received any confirmation from IndiaAI.

“We did apply for the IndiaAI proposal but haven’t received any confirmation yet. Waiting for IndiaAI to get back to us,” it said.

The IndiaAI Mission floated a proposal seeking bids from Indian startups, researchers and entrepreneurs to collaborate on building foundational models trained on Indian datasets in January.

Following which the government reportedly received nearly 67 proposals to build indigenous AI foundational models.

A senior government official told The Indian Express that the applications also include proposals to build 20 large language models (LLMs). Sarvam AI, CoRover.ai and Ola’s Krutrim were among the startups that have submitted applications for building the LLMs.

Sarvam AI cofounder Pratyush Kumar told NDTV, “We need to think about India’s sovereign AI models, else we have the risk of being left out if we don’t step up, as has happened in the previous generations,”

Soket AI Labs has proposed to build a 120-Bn parameter open-source Indic LLM trained on 2 trillion tokens under the ‘EKA Project’, said ET report.

On the other hand, Gnani.ai and Gan.ai have proposed to build small language models.

Centre’s INR 10,372 Cr IndiaAI Mission

The Union Cabinet approved the IndiaAI Mission with an allocation of INR 10,372 Cr in the next five years, aiming to foster innovation in the homegrown AI ecosystem in March last year.

It comprises initiatives such as IndiaAI Compute Capacity, IndiaAI Innovation Centre (IAIC), IndiaAI Datasets Platform, IndiaAI Application Development Initiative, IndiaAI FutureSkills, IndiaAI Startup Financing, and Safe & Trusted AI.

IndiaAI Compute Capacity envisions building a cutting-edge, scalable AI computing infrastructure by deploying more than 10,000 GPUs through PPP model. With IndiaAI Innovation Centre (IAIC), the Centre is looking to create a leading academic institution to retain top research talent, develop and deploy indigenous large multimodal models (LMMs) and domain-specific models

Notably, IndiaAI Datasets platform looks into accessibility, quality, and utility of public sector datasets and the IndiaAI Future Skills program focuses on expanding the accessibility of graduate and post-graduate AI programs as well establishing AI Labs to impart foundational-level courses

Developing Indigenous AI Infra

India is aiming to build affordable AI infrastructure to support startups, academics, and research agencies. In line with it, Meity last year said, “The government is actively shaping an AI ecosystem where computing power, GPUs, and research opportunities are accessible at an affordable cost.”

The ministry also said that the key focus of this mission is the development of a high-end common computing facility equipped with 18,693 GPUs. The ministry underlined that this capacity is nearly nine times that of the open-source AI model DeepSeek and about two-thirds of what ChatGPT operates on.

Furthermore, the government also eased the eligibility criteria for the procurement of GPUs under the IndiaAI mission to allow more participation of smaller companies and startups.