Government-backed initiative becomes largest beneficiary of MeitY’s ₹1,500 crore allocation, set to build trillion-parameter multilingual and multimodal AI models
BharatGen, India’s first government-backed multimodal sovereign AI initiative, has been awarded ₹988.6 crore under the IndiaAI Mission, making it the largest beneficiary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s (MeitY) ₹1,500 crore allocation. The announcement was made by Hon’ble Union Minister of Electronics & IT, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw, at an event held at The Ashok, New Delhi, on September 18.
The funding underscores BharatGen’s central role in building India’s sovereign AI ecosystem and will accelerate the development of multilingual, multimodal AI models, including Large Language Models (LLMs) with up to one trillion parameters. These models will power AI-driven applications across critical sectors such as agriculture, governance, finance, healthcare, and education.
Earlier this year, BharatGen launched Param-1, a bilingual LLM with 2.9 billion parameters, pretrained on 5 trillion tokens in English and Hindi. The next phase aims to expand coverage to all 22 scheduled Indian languages, ensuring equitable access and inclusive innovation.
The BharatGen consortium includes leading academic institutions such as IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur, IIIT Hyderabad, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Mandi, IIT Kharagpur, IIIT Delhi, and IIM Indore, reflecting a collaborative national effort.
“This allocation will empower BharatGen to advance foundational models, strengthen AI infrastructure, and drive adoption while ensuring inclusive access across India’s diverse linguistic and cultural landscape,” said Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan, IIT Bombay & Principal Investigator.
“With BharatGen, we are laying the foundations of an AI ecosystem that reflects the diversity of our nation while advancing India’s leadership in the global technology landscape,” added Rishi Bal, Executive Vice President, BharatGen.
Congratulating the team, Prof. Abhay Karandikar, Secretary, DST, remarked, “It’s inspiring to witness the remarkable scale and speed of BharatGen’s progress. With this whole-of-government approach, the initiative is poised for an even brighter future.”
The allocation positions BharatGen as a cornerstone in India’s sovereign AI journey, bridging academic excellence with enterprise-scale execution to build an AI stack “made in India, for India.”
