BharatGen awarded Rs 988.6 crore to build India’s sovereign AI models

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has sanctioned ₹988.6 crore to BharatGen, India’s sovereign artificial intelligence initiative, under the IndiaAI Mission 2025.

The announcement was made by Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who emphasised the government’s commitment to building indigenous AI capabilities.

This allocation makes the initiative the largest beneficiary of MeitY’s ₹1,500 crore budgeted funding for the mission.

Led by IIT Bombay

BharatGen has been set up as a non-profit consortium anchored at IIT Bombay, in collaboration with other academic institutions and industry partners. The initiative is tasked with developing large language models (LLMs) and multimodal systems that are tailored to India’s linguistic and cultural diversity.

The models developed under BharatGen are expected to be deployed in five critical sectors identified by the government and the consortium:

• Agriculture – delivering smarter crop management, predictive advisory, and improved resource use.
• Healthcare – assisting in diagnostics, patient interaction, and equitable access to medical knowledge.
• Governance – enhancing transparency, responsiveness, and service delivery in public administration.
• Finance – developing reliable AI solutions for compliance, financial inclusion, and sectoral innovation.
• Education – supporting inclusive, multilingual learning platforms that reach learners in their own languages.

Launch and trajectory

BharatGen was formally launched in 2024 and has since begun laying the groundwork for India’s sovereign AI efforts. With this new round of funding, the consortium is positioned to accelerate its work on foundational models and applied solutions.

Both the government and BharatGen have emphasised that success will depend on close cooperation between government agencies, academia, and private sector players. By combining technical expertise with real-world applications, BharatGen seeks to create models that are scalable, inclusive, and resilient.