IBM and BharatGen on Thursday announced a strategic partnership to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) adoption in India through sovereign multimodal and large language models (LLMs) tailored for the country’s linguistic and cultural landscape.
BharatGen is also likely to be selected for the second phase of the IndiaAI Mission, alongside seven other firms, marking a significant boost for its efforts to build open-source foundational models for Indian developers and researchers, sources in the department of science and technology told AIM.
The collaboration combines IBM’s expertise in data, governance, and model training with BharatGen’s mandate to build inclusive, India-centric AI systems. The collaboration will focus on developing and scaling multimodal and language-specific AI models and expanding their use across sectors, including education, agriculture, healthcare, banking, and citizen services.
As part of the initiative, IBM and BharatGen will work on solution templates for Indic use cases, create demonstrations and targeted domain applications on IBM Watsonx and Red Hat OpenShift AI, and establish scalable data pipelines enhanced with Indic-specific capabilities.
The collaboration also aims to implement a governance framework for responsible model development and create benchmarks suited for Indian languages and domains, while advancing research in high-performance generative AI architectures.
“At BharatGen, we have been building sovereign AI models and the ecosystem that reflects the linguistic richness, cultural nuances, and diverse needs of our people,” said Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan of BharatGen. “This collaboration with IBM allows us to bring scalable architectures and systems for India. With IBM’s enterprise-grade platforms and our commitment to public-good AI, we are on a path to drive transformative solutions for empowering India’s digital journey.”
Sandip Patel, managing director of IBM India and South Asia, said the company is committed to supporting the creation of open, trusted AI that addresses real-world problems. “Through our collaboration with BharatGen, we aim to advance sovereign AI capabilities that reflect India’s diversity and deliver meaningful impact across sectors,” he added.
BharatGen’s roadmap for large language and foundation models is designed to serve both national and commercial needs across agriculture, finance, healthcare, national security, and education. A key focus will be the inclusion of underserved Indian languages and dialects beyond the top 12 to 22, to ensure broader digital participation and equity.
BharatGen operates under the Technology Innovation Hub at IIT Bombay and is supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST). The initiative is tasked with developing efficient AI models for Indian languages, building a multilingual data repository, fostering public-private partnerships, and strengthening India’s AI talent pool and startup ecosystem.