MeitY shortlists four startups in ₹10,000 crore AI push; official announcement expected soon

India is set to power its indigenous AI ambitions through its ₹10,000 crore IndiaAI Mission, with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) preparing to formally back four homegrown startups—Sarvam AI, Soket AI Labs, Gnani.ai, and Gan.ai—for the development of Indian AI foundational models, according to a report by The Economic Times.

The shortlisted companies are expected to be part of the first tranche under the government’s multi-tiered strategy to build Large Language Models (LLMs) tailored to India’s linguistic and digital diversity.

Among the selected startups, Soket AI Labs has proposed the EKA Project, a 120-billion parameter open-source Indic LLM trained on 2 trillion tokens. CEO Abhishek Upperwal confirmed the submission to AIM, stating, “Ours is a 12-month proposal, but we are looking to have multiple small models in the next six months.” The funding amount, however, remains undisclosed.

Meanwhile, Sarvam AI is working on a 70-billion parameter multimodal AI model supporting both Indian languages and English. The company is expected to receive GPU compute resources worth ₹200 crore instead of direct financial grants, as part of MeitY’s strategic resource allocation.

Startups Gnani.ai and Gan.ai have submitted proposals for smaller-scale language models. While Gnani.ai declined to comment, CEO Ganesh Gopalan previously confirmed that the company is focused on developing speech-to-speech models for Indic languages. Co-founder Ananth Nagaraj is part of the IndiaAI Mission’s draft policy team, lending the startup deeper involvement in the initiative.

The move comes amid growing geopolitical urgency, spurred by China’s DeepSeek AI model, which gained global attention earlier this year. India’s government has since accelerated efforts to develop indigenous AI infrastructure.

Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had earlier stated, “Very soon we will have our own LLM,” signalling the country’s resolve to catch up with global GenAI leaders.

By February 15, MeitY received 67 applications, followed by another 120 in March, for its ₹1,500 crore incentive scheme for foundational model development. Final selections are expected to be announced imminently.

In tandem, MeitY is building a centralised compute infrastructure, partnering with 10 GPU-as-a-service providers including Jio, Yotta, CtrlS, Tata Communications, and NxtGen. This cloud infrastructure aims to offer GPU access at sub-$1/hour rates, making it one of the world’s most affordable compute platforms.