Sarvam AI is an Indian artificial intelligence startup focused on building large language models (LLMs) and AI solutions tailored specifically for India’s linguistic diversity and unique needs. Founded in 2023 by Dr. Vivek Raghavan and Dr. Pratyush Kumar, the Bengaluru-based company aims to make generative AI accessible at scale across India, supporting multiple Indian languages and voice-first applications.
Key Aspects of Sarvam AI
Flagship Model: Sarvam-M
Sarvam AI recently launched Sarvam-M, a 24-billion-parameter open-weight multilingual large language model. Sarvam-M is a hybrid-reasoning, text-only model built on top of Mistral Small, a compact AI model from the French company Mistral AI. It is designed to excel in Indian languages, mathematics, programming, and reasoning tasks.
Sarvam-M supports “think” mode for complex reasoning and “non-think” mode for general conversation, and it offers seamless support for Indic scripts and romanized Indian languages, enabling smooth multilingual interactions.
Performance and Capabilities
Sarvam-M sets new benchmarks in Indian language understanding, math, and programming tasks for its size, showing significant improvements over base models and outperforming other models like LLaMA-4 Scout. It achieves up to 86% improvement in combined tasks involving Indian languages and math, highlighting its strength in code-mixed language scenarios.
The model is open-sourced and accessible via Hugging Face, with APIs available for developers to build applications such as conversational agents, translation tools, and educational platforms.
Focus on Indian Languages and Voice AI
Sarvam AI emphasizes deep integration of Indian languages, supporting 10 major Indian languages including Hindi, Telugu, Gujarati, Tamil, and others. The company also develops voice AI technologies, such as Bulbul, a speech model offering natural-sounding voices in multiple Indian languages with authentic accents.
Government Collaboration and Sovereign AI Mission
Sarvam AI was selected by the Government of India under the IndiaAI Mission to build India’s sovereign large language model, receiving dedicated compute resources to develop an indigenous foundational AI model from scratch. This initiative aims to create secure, scalable AI applications for citizens, enterprises, and government use, fostering a sovereign AI ecosystem in India.
Product Ecosystem
Sarvam AI offers a range of AI products and platforms including:
- Sarvam Agents: Voice-enabled, multilingual conversational agents
- Mayura: Translation tools for Indian contexts
- Saaras and Saarika: Speech-to-text and text-to-speech models for Indian languages
- Shuka: India’s first audio large language model in Hindi
- A1: AI legal companion tool
Summary
Sarvam AI is pioneering India’s homegrown generative AI with a strong focus on multilingual capabilities, especially for Indian languages, and voice-first AI applications. Its flagship model Sarvam-M is a powerful, open-source large language model optimized for Indian languages and complex reasoning tasks. Supported by the Indian government’s IndiaAI Mission, Sarvam AI is building a sovereign AI ecosystem aimed at making AI more accessible, inclusive, and culturally relevant for India.