India marked a historic step in its advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) with the launch of BharatGen, a pioneering initiative in generative AI designed to revolutionize public service delivery and enhance citizen engagement. The initiative was inaugurated virtually by Dr. Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology, on October 3.
Dr. Singh praised BharatGen as a milestone for India’s technological self-reliance and a step towards global leadership in AI development. During the inauguration, Dr. Singh emphasized BharatGen’s significance, stating, “BharatGen is a proud example of India’s commitment to advancing homegrown technologies. It positions India as a global leader in the field of Generative AI, much like our achievements with UPI and other innovations that have transformed various sectors.”
BharatGen is notable with a focus on creating AI systems tailored to India’s unique linguistic and cultural landscape. Spearheaded by the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS), which operates under the Department of Science and Technology (DST), the project aims to develop generative AI models that cater to India’s diverse languages and cultural contexts.
The implementation of BharatGen is being managed by the TIH Foundation for IOT and IOE at IIT Bombay, with academic collaboration from other prestigious institutions, including IIIT Hyderabad, IIT Mandi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, IIM Indore, and IIT Madras. The team, led by Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan from IIT Bombay, is working to develop AI models that can generate high-quality text and multimodal content in Indian languages.
A key goal of BharatGen is to deliver AI models and applications as a public good, addressing India’s broader needs such as social equity, cultural preservation, and linguistic diversity. The project will prioritize ensuring that the benefits of AI reach all segments of society, especially those underserved by current global AI models. Professor Abhay Karandikar, Secretary of the DST, highlighted this aspect, noting, “BharatGen is aligned with the goal of making AI accessible to all citizens, using AI not only for industrial and commercial purposes but also to address national priorities like cultural preservation and inclusive technology development.”
The initiative will cater to both text and speech in various Indian languages, capturing the nuances of these languages, many of which are underrepresented in global AI models. BharatGen is designed to train on multilingual datasets, making it more inclusive and culturally relevant for India’s diverse population. The project will also focus on building a dataset of India-centric data to enhance data sovereignty, ensuring that Indian narratives and dialects are accurately represented in AI technologies.
BharatGen aligns with India’s Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) initiative by reducing reliance on foreign technologies and fostering a domestic AI ecosystem. By developing foundational AI models within India, the initiative aims to strengthen the country’s AI capabilities and promote innovation across sectors, including startups, industries, and government agencies.
One of the core features of BharatGen is its focus on data-efficient learning, particularly for Indian languages that have limited digital presence. Through collaboration with academic institutions, BharatGen will develop models that are effective with minimal data, addressing a critical gap in AI development for underserved languages.
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