What if your AI assistant chats with you exactly in your language—be it Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, or even Manipuri? That’s exactly the promise of Sarvam AI Indic LLMs—to make AI truly Indian, not just in language but in spirit. Yes, the models in Sarvam AI are trained to understand and respond in 22+ Indian languages, making digital interactions more natural, smooth, and impactful.
Now, under the national IndianAI Mission, the Government has also announced plans to develop India’s first sovereign foundational large language model through Sarvam AI. This initiative shows a great step towards inclusive, homegrown AI that reflects the country’s linguistic richness, cultural heritage, and technological ambitions.
What are Indic LLMs?
Indic LLMs (Indian language large language models) are specifically designed AI systems that understand, generate, and interact in Indian languages using advanced transformer architectures and multilingual training datasets. This does not just include Hindi or Tamil, but also covers a rich tapestry of tongues like Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, Odia, Punjabi, etc.
Key technical capabilities of Indic LLMs include:
- Cross-lingual transfer learning across 22+ Indian languages
- Code-mixed language processing (Hinglish, Tanglish, etc.)
- Cultural context understanding through region-specific training data
- Multi-script support (Devanagari, Tamil, Bengali, Gurmukhi scripts)
Most importantly, these models will not just translate but grasp idioms, sentence structures, and cultural context native to each language. Indic LLMs will value each user’s lived realities and make them feel not just heard but truly understood.
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Sarvam AI: Goals and Purpose
The co-founder of AI4 Bharat Pratyush Kumar (former Microsoft Research scientist) and Vivek Raghavan (ex-Google AI researcher) founded this masterpiece called Sarvam AI in 2023, a next-generation initiative to serve India and its diverse population through inclusive, intelligent, and language-aware artificial intelligence. The name Sarvam is a Sanskrit word that translates to “everything” or “all”—a fitting name for an initiative that aims to serve every corner of the country.
Sarvam‑1 & Sarvam‑M: From Multilingual LLMs to Sovereign Models
With a 4 trillion-token dataset specifically curated for Indian languages and structured for efficiency, Sarvam AI launched Sarvam-1 (2B parameters), an open-source LLM supporting 10 Indic languages in October 2024. After the launch, Sarvam-1 achieved:
- 15.2% improvement over LLaMA-3.1 8B in translation tasks on IndicGenBench
- 92.3% accuracy in cross-lingual understanding benchmarks
- 8x faster inference compared to similar-sized multilingual models
After the success, under the ₹10,372 crore IndiaAI Mission, Sarvam AI was selected to build the nation’s first sovereign foundational LLM—Sarvam‑M. Backed by government support, Sarvam AI is set to receive access to 4,000 high-performance H100 GPUs over the next six months through the National AI Resource Portal. This computing power will enable the team to build a multimodal, multilingual large language model from scratch- one that will be easy to understand, intuitive to use, and communicate smoothly across the country’s linguistic landscape.
Reportedly, Sarvam claims Sarvam-M (planned 70B+ parameters) outperforms top models, including LLaMA-3 and Gemma 3- especially in math, code, and code‑mixed language tasks with 23% higher accuracy on Indian language benchmarks.
Why These Indian Language LLMs Matter
By making technology accessible in native tongues, Indian Language LLMs address the critical digital divide affecting 1.3+ billion Indians. Research shows that only 10% of India’s internet content is available in Indian languages, despite 90% of users preferring their native language for digital interactions.
Measurable impact areas:
- Education : 60% improvement in learning outcomes when AI tutoring is delivered in native languages
- Healthcare : 40% increase in rural telemedicine adoption with voice-enabled Indic interfaces
- e-governance : 3x higher citizen engagement in digital services with multilingual support
- Agriculture : 85% of farmers prefer voice-based crop advisory in local dialects
No matter where someone lives or what language they speak, Sarvam AI Indic LLMs bring the power of AI to help people learn, grow, and connect.
As most of the digital tools are English-first, they become harder to use for millions who speak regional languages. But here are Indic LLMs that ensure even non-English speakers can confidently access AI effortlessly.
These Indian language LLMs are not just about translation. They capture the emotion and cultural nuance integrated in each regional language.
There is no specific class requirement, allowing individuals from government sectors, education, and private institutions to engage in the multilingual LLMs in India.
Voice First: Indic Voice LLMs
Voice has now become the most natural and intuitive medium for digital interaction in India, with 420 million voice-first users expected by 2025.
Since using smartphones and daily voice commands are the norm for millions, Sarvam AI Indic LLMs are developing speech-to-speech capabilities with:
- Real-time voice processing in 10+ Indian languages
- Accent adaptation across regional variations
- Noise cancellation optimized for Indian acoustic environments
- Low-latency inference (sub-200ms response time)
Models are trained to understand code-mixed phrases like “internet ka data check karo,” common in everyday Indian speech with 94% accuracy in intent recognition.
With the help of voice-first interfaces in languages, people from rural areas can easily access digital services, bridging the literacy gap for 287 million non-literate Indians.
Open Source & Ecosystem Impact
Here is how open source opens doors for inclusive innovation and collective progress:
Sarvam-1 adoption metrics:
- 10,000+ downloads within first month of release
- 150+ startups building applications using the model
- 25+ research papers published using Sarvam-1 as foundation
- 40% cost reduction in developing India-specific AI applications
As Sarvam-1 is open source, any developers, startups, and researchers can freely access and build upon its capabilities through Apache 2.0 license.
Open access to these Indic LLMs leads to low-cost AI experimentation across sectors, from education to agriculture.
By freely sharing models and data with the community, Sarvam AI helps create a robust, homegrown ecosystem of Indian Language AI worth an estimated $17 billion by 2030.
Small teams that lack massive resources can build intelligent, India-specific AI tools. Thanks to Sarvam AI Indic LLMs, these teams now have a powerful foundation to innovate and create meaningful tech solutions.
Final Thoughts
So, Sarvam AI’s Indic LLMs showcase more than just a technical achievement. Yes, it represents how AI can be human-centric, designed not only for convenience, but for accessibility and cultural relevance as well. For India to get ready for a future shaped by artificial intelligence, it is important that AI speaks the way people speak—clearly, kindly, and in the languages they understand.
With Sarvam-1 and the upcoming sovereign Sarvam-M, India is stepping into the realm where technology will not only serve the people but speak to them in their own words.
FAQs
What makes Sarvam AI different from Google Translate or ChatGPT in Indian languages?
Sarvam AI Indic LLMs are trained specifically on Indian cultural contexts, idioms, and code-mixed conversations, achieving 23% higher accuracy than generic multilingual models in Indian language tasks.
Which Indian languages does Sarvam-1 currently support?
Sarvam-1 supports 10 major Indian languages: Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, and Punjabi, with plans to expand to 22+ languages.
How can developers access Sarvam AI models?
Sarvam-1 is available on Hugging Face Model Hub and GitHub under Apache 2.0 license, while Sarvam-M will be accessible through the National AI Resource Portal for Indian entities.

