Sarvam launches GenAI platform for India

Bengaluru: Sarvam AI, a Bengaluru-headquartered startup founded last year to develop Indian language generative AI platforms and applications, on Tuesday announced a slew of business-to-business products built on top of its GenAI models. The launch saw the presence of a host of industry bigwigs and government officials, underscoring the importance of the project to make AI accessible to the masses. Infosys co-founder and founding chairman of UIDAI (Aadhaar) Nandan Nilekani was there, as was Nvidia's managing director of South Asia Vishal Dhupar. Many others sent virtual messages. These included Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla, who is an investor in Sarvam, Aadhaar's former chief architect Pramod Varma, Meta vice president of public policy Shivnath Thukral, and Yotta Infrastructure Solutions founder and CEO Sunil Gupta.Nilekani noted that India is a country where AI is being used a lot. "Sarvam AI has now shown that we have the tools and infrastructure to do it at scale and make it cheap. We need to have frugal innovation in AI in India," he said. This is the first time that Sarvam, previously working out of IIT Madras, has unveiled a set of subscription software products for enterprises for commercialisation. Its products also included a mix of open source software.Previously, in December 2023, the company had released its first open-source Hindi language model called OpenHathi-Hi-0.1. It was the first AI model aimed at innovating in AI for Indian languages. Catering to industries including financial services, legal services, consumer goods, technology, media and telecom, Sarvam’s product mix unveiled on Tuesday included Sarvam Agents, Sarvam 2B, Shuka 1.0, A1 and several Indic languages-based Sarvam models.Sarvam Agents are voice-enabled, multilingual, action-oriented, custom business agents deployable via telephone, WhatsApp, or in-app. These are available in 10 Indian languages, available at a cost starting Re 1 per minute. 2B is a foundational Indic large language model. Shuka 1.0 is an open-source audio language model, an audio extension on the Llama 8B model to support Indian language voice in and text out, which is more accurate than frontier models.A1 is a GenAI software designed for lawyers to enhance capabilities with features such as regulatory chat, document drafting, redaction and data extraction. Among the Sarvam models, which are available as application programming interfaces (API), were the likes of Maurya for translation, Bulbul for text to speech, Saaras for speech to text and Sesame for bank and account statements.“Our mission is to democratise AI and make it accessible to every Indian, regardless of their linguistic and socio-economic background. This platform is a testament to our commitment to bridging the digital divide and fostering innovation in India’s AI landscape,” Pratyush Kumar, cofounder of Sarvam AI, said. Kumar is also a founder of a research initiative on open-source Indian language AI, called AI4Bharat, at the IIT Madras campus, where Sarvam AI’s office was previously housed. Kumar and cofounder Vivek Raghavan moved to an office in Bengaluru in 2024.
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