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Nandan Nilekani commits second multi-year grant to AI4Bharat at IIT Madras
Nilekani-founded EkStep Foundation and AI4Bharat began investing in language digitisation, data infrastructure and early models tailored to Indian linguistic diversity.
AI4Bharat has become the language backbone of India's AI stack. Its open-source speech, translation and text-to-speech models now power key public digital platforms. Bhashini, India's national language platform under the IndiaAI Mission, has adopted AI4Bharat's models to scale multilingual services across governance, healthcare and finance.
'Inclusion begins with access—and for Bharat, that means language,' said Nilekani. 'AI4Bharat is building the infrastructure that ensures every Indian can access digital services in the language they speak,' he added.
The Supreme Court's SUVAS system translates judgments into regional languages. NPCI has enabled voice-based UPI transactions in native tongues. Agricultural chatbots like Kisan e-Mitra use these models to deliver real-time information to farmers. AI4Bharat's language datasets—meticulously collected in all 22 constitutionally recognised Indian languages—have been released as public goods, openly available for use through the AI4Bharat website and integrated into AIKosh, India's open AI repository.
Prof V Kamakoti, Director of IIT Madras, added: 'With the growing need for Bharat-specific AI models and also reducing the possibility of a potential AI divide, the vision of 'AI for All' is extremely relevant for our country. I sincerely hope that AI4Bharat, with the generous support of Mr Nandan Nilekani, will help in meeting these objectives.'
The 2022 grant established the Nilekani Centre at AI4Bharat, supported by EkStep Foundation. Over three years, this effort has demonstrated how to build population-scale, high-quality and open-source language infrastructure through community participation and scientific rigour.
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