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The Hindu
a day ago
- Business
- The Hindu
Three more start-ups selected to get GPU access for Indian AI models
Three firms — Gurugram-based Soket AI, Delhi-based and Bengaluru-based — have been selected in the IndiaAI Mission's ongoing drive to facilitate the development of an indigenous foundational AI large language model (LLM). 'Like Sarvam AI, which was selected earlier this year as the first such firm, these three teams also have a very big target in front of them,' Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said. By being selected, these firms will get access to the Common Compute facility, giving them access to thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs) on which AI models are trained and deployed. With the government's facility, operated by a clutch of large tech firms like Sify, set to have a total of 34,000 GPUs soon, Mr. Vaishnaw said that the 'worry' of whether 'India will be able to get that kind of compute' is 'practically over'. co-founder Ganesh Gopalan said that the company had been 'developing voice-to-voice large language models for India and the world, because we believe transformative AI must speak the language of the people it serves.' The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology's Additional Secretary Abhishek Singh said that the IndiaAI Mission has also been working on hackathons with 'allied Ministries' like the Ministry of Home Affairs — for classifying cyber crimes — and with the Geological Survey of India for mineral discovery. 'Very soon we will be working with the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and other ministries for launching more problem statements to give opportunities to our startups and researchers to contribute to solutions,' he said.
Mint
a day ago
- Business
- Mint
IndiaAI Mission gets 16,000 new GPUs, three more foundational models
New Delhi: The Union government on Friday approved the empanelment of 15,640 new graphic processing unit (GPU) processors from data centre and cloud service providers, and also appointed three new startups that will get access to these chips for free, to train their artificial intelligence models. Sanjeev Bikhchandani's Info Edge Ventures-backed AI startup, was one of the three startups appointed to build a sovereign foundational AI model for voice-based AI services. The startup will build a 14-billion parameter voice AI model and real-time speech processing and 'advanced reasoning capabilities.' Foundational AI models are typically better when they are based on larger volumes of training data. But, smaller models are less expensive to train, are more targeted towards specific industries, and are easier to run. The other two startups appointed include Bengaluru-based Sokal AI Labs, and Noida-based Gan AI. While Sokai AI is building a 120-billion parameter foundational AI model catering to defence, education and healthcare sectors, Gan AI will build a 70-billion parameter multilingual foundational model for varied applications. Sovereign AI models refer to foundational algorithms built for usage in generative AI applications, but not by global companies. Sovereign models are typically trained on a nation's indigenous datasets, which theoretically help in adding local market data, language and context to AI applications. The three startups join Peak XV-backed Sarvam AI, which became the first startup appointed by the ministry of electronics and information technology (Meity) to build a foundational AI model for India. Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the first of the four foundational models will be rolled out before the end of 2025. In terms of compute, Hiranandani Group's Yotta Data Services was empanelled by Meity a second time, and will supply over 8,000 units of Nvidia's B200 GPUs to cater to the mission. A senior official with direct knowledge of the matter said requesting anonymity that the GPUs will be brought into service within the next two to three months, as Yotta is still in the process of installing them in its data centres. Sify Digital Services was also a part of the empanelled GPU providers, and will supply an unspecified number of Nvidia's H100, H200 and L4 GPU chips. Access to these GPUs is crucial in terms of training AI models. Ganesh Gopalan, chief executive of told Mint that the government empanelment will reduce the company's operating cost to 'one-tenth of what it was before.' Abhishek Upperwal, chief executive of Soket AI, added that 'over 70%' of the company's cost of research and development, as well as training of AI models, are linked to access to GPUs for computing power. 'This is the least possible cost of compute that we're getting access to. We're in talks with venture capital firms for a seed funding round in order to accelerate our research, and within the next one year, a version of our foundational model should be ready,' Upperwal said. Abhishek Singh, chief executive of India AI Mission and additional secretary, Meity, added that the Centre had received 'more than 500 applications for developing India's foundational models.' 'There will be more startup selections in the next few days. On 9 June, Meity is also meeting applicants to empanel more cloud compute providers, and there will be a rolling empanelment process where vendors will be brought online as and when required,' Singh added. The $1.2-billion IndiaAI Mission is tasked with backing startups to build foundational AI models in India, create a subsidized cloud compute platform to help academia, researchers and startups access GPUs to train AI models, and create datasets in Indian languages to train AI models. It is also set to build a marketplace to help startups developing AI models to sell their services to clients. Access to a foundational model is expected to reduce a nation's dependence on other countries for what is being viewed as a fundamental piece of technology going forward. Entrepreneurs added that the development can amplify market outreach for startups building sovereign AI models. 'The government itself can be a key client. But additionally, reducing the cost of compute can help startups build models more efficiently, which in turn can reduce the need for capital that is the biggest cost factor behind developing AI models and conducting R&D,' Gopalan added. Vaishnaw added that the new announcements mark 'significant progress' under the goals set forth by the IndiaAI Mission. 'We have 367 datasets on the mission's non-personal data platform, AI Kosh. The entire ecosystem is being built right now in AI, and the IT industry should capture this transition as an opportunity, rather than be disrupted by it. AI development is also creating an opportunity to reverse India's brain drain, and bring talented engineers back to the country,' the minister said.
Economic Times
a day ago
- Business
- Economic Times
After Sarvam.ai, Soket AI, Gnani.ai, Gan.ai to now build foundation AI models, says IndiaAI Mission
IndiaAI Mission on Friday announced Soket AI, and will be developing foundation artificial intelligence (AI) models apart from that was initially selected. ET had reported this more than a month AI will develop an open source 120 billion parameter foundation model optimised for the country's linguistic diversity targeting sectors such as defence, healthcare and education. will build a 14 billion parameter voice AI foundation model delivering multilingual, real time speech processing with advanced reasoning will create a 70 billion parameter multilingual foundation model targeting superhuman text-to-speech (TTS) model capabilities.'We are working on another PhD programme and a large talent development programme starting from the very basic to a really advanced level so that the foundational research in AI can also be funded out of the AI mission,' said IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. 'I hope some of the smart young engineers working on these teams would like to relocate back to India,' he added. He was referring to the three teams selected to build foundation AI models. 'We're proud to lead the way in developing voice-to-voice large language models for India and the world, because we believe transformative AI must speak the language of the people it serves,' said Ganesh Gopalan, co-founder and chief executive of IndiaAI Mission also said there were now 34,333 GPUs available on the IndiaAI Compute portal. These include GPUs of Nvidia, AMD, AWS, and Intel. The offering comprises 15,100 H100 Nvidia GPUs, 8,192 Nvidia B200 GPUs, 4,812 Nvidia H200 GPUs, and 1,973 Nvidia L40S GPUs. The other GPU variants each comprise less than 1,000 or 500 in seven technically qualified bidders in the second round of the GPU tender are empanelled, it said. However, there was no information on how many of these 34,333 GPUs have been assigned AI workloads and are currently being used. The seven empanelled bidders are Cyfuture India, Ishan Infotech, Locuz Enterprise Solutions, Netmagic IT Services (NTT GDC India) Sify Digital Services, Vensysco Technologies, and Yotta Data Services. In all, 367 datasets have been uploaded on AI Kosh, Vaishnaw revealed. AI Kosh is the government's platform that provides a repository of datasets, models and use cases to enable AI innovation. It also features AI sandbox capabilities. IndiaAI Mission said on May 16 it had received 506 foundation AI proposals across the three phases. Given the overwhelming response and continued interest, the mission has decided to extend the deadline for submissions under phase 3 of the call for proposals. The earlier deadline was April 30.'Further dates for submission of proposals, the acceptance of new applications post April 30, will be announced subsequently, as per requirements, once the examination of proposals already submitted has been completed," IndiaAI said on its part of the first phase of approvals, was selected to initiate the development of an indigenous foundational multi-modal, multi-scale model will have 70 billion parameters. It is developing three model variants. These include Sarvam-Large for advanced reasoning and generation, Sarvam-Small for real-time interactive applications, and Sarvam-Edge for compact on-device will get access to 4,096 Nvidia H100 graphics processing units (GPU) for six months from the IndiaAI Mission.
Time of India
a day ago
- Business
- Time of India
After Sarvam.ai, Soket AI, Gnani.ai, Gan.ai to now build foundation AI models, says IndiaAI Mission
The IndiaAI Mission on Friday announced Soket AI , , and will be developing foundation artificial intelligence (AI) models apart from , which was initially selected. ET had reported this more than a month ago. Soket AI will develop an open source 120 billion parameter foundation model optimised for the country's linguistic diversity targetting sectors such as defence, healthcare and education. will build a 14 billion parameter voice AI foundation model delivering multilingual, real-time speech processing with advanced reasoning capabilities. will create a 70 billion parameter multilingual foundation model targeting superhuman text-to-speech (TTS) model capabilities. The IndiaAI Mission also said that 34,333 GPUs are now available on the IndiaAI Compute portal. These include GPUs from Nvidia, AMD, AWS, and Intel. The offering comprises 15,100 H100 Nvidia GPUs, 8,192 Nvidia B200 GPUs, 4,812 Nvidia H200 GPUs, and 1,973 Nvidia L40S GPUs. The other GPU variants each comprise fewer than 1,000 or 500 in number. All seven technically qualified bidders in the second round of the GPU tender are empanelled, it said. Live Events The seven empanelled bidders are Cyfuture India, Ishan Infotech, Locuz Enterprise Solutions, Netmagic IT Services (NTT GDC India), Sify Digital Services, Vensysco Technologies, and Yotta Data Services. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories 367 datasets have been uploaded on AI Kosh, Vaishnaw revealed. AI Kosh is the government's platform that provides a repository of datasets, models and use cases to enable AI innovation. It also features AI sandbox capabilities. IndiaAI Mission on May 16 had said that it has received 506 foundation AI proposals across the three phases. Given the overwhelming response and continued interest, the mission has decided to extend the deadline for submissions under phase 3 of the call for proposals. The earlier deadline was April 30. 'Further dates for submission of proposals, the acceptance of new applications post April 30, will be announced subsequently, as per requirements, once the examination of proposals already submitted has been completed," IndiaAI said on its website. As part of the first phase of approvals, was selected to initiate the development of an indigenous foundational model. Sarvam's multimodal, multi-scale model will have 70 billion parameters. Sarvam cofounder Vivek Raghavan had said on April 26 that the model will be completed in six months. Capable of reasoning, designed for voice, and fluent in Indian languages, Sarvam's model will be ready for secure, population-scale deployment, the startup had said in a statement. According to cofounder Pratyush Kumar, Sarvam is developing three model variants -- Sarvam-Large for advanced reasoning and generation, Sarvam-Small for real-time interactive applications, and Sarvam-Edge for compact on-device tasks. Sarvam will get access to 4,096 Nvidia H100 graphics processing units (GPUs) for six months from the IndiaAI Mission's common compute cluster to train its model, people in the know had said. 'We are collaborating with AI4Bharat at IIT-Madras, a leader in Indian language AI research, to build these models,' Kumar had said.
India Gazette
11-05-2025
- Business
- India Gazette
Technology a force multiplier for inclusive growth, say techies on National Technology Day
New Delhi [India], May 11 (ANI): National Technology Day, celebrated on May 11 every year, commemorates the momentous events of this day back in 1998, when India conducted successful nuclear tests under Operation Shakti, and saw the maiden flight of the indigenously developed Hansa-3 aircraft. In recognition of these achievements, the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee declared May 11 as National Technology Day. Over the years, National Technology Day has evolved into a flagship occasion for honouring scientific excellence, showcasing industrial innovations, and reinforcing the partnership between science, society, and industry. Scientific temperament in India has increased over the years - from space to telecom, semiconductors to AI, biotechnology to fintechs. Here are some of the perspectives from people in technology domain on India's growing prowess: According to Ganesh Gopalan, Co-Founder and CEO, at AI services provider India's relentless pursuit of innovation, and a reminder of how technology can be a force multiplier for inclusive growth. 'Today, breakthroughs in Voice AI, multilingual large language models (LLMs), and agentic AI are empowering enterprises to build smarter, more human-centric solutions. From revolutionizing customer support and financial services to enabling real-time healthcare assistance in regional languages, AI is reshaping how industries operate and interact. As India's digital ecosystem accelerates, it is crucial that innovation remains responsible, ethical, and tailored to local as well as global needs,' Gopalan noted. India ranks 39th in the Global Innovation Index (GII), which presents vast opportunities for developing advanced, innovative and sustainable technologies which will help drive the country's digital vision forward. Anku Jain, Managing Director, MediaTek India, said, 'India's technology sector continues to be a strong pillar showcasing prominent and immense growth, powered by innovation in semiconductors, connectivity, and digital infrastructure. At MediaTek, we believe that fostering local R&D, strengthening the semiconductor ecosystem, and investing in skill development will be key to supporting India's ambitions as a global innovation hub.' The official theme for National Technology Day 2025 -- 'YANTRA - Yugantar for Advancing New Technology, Research & Acceleration.' 'National Technology Day is a celebration of India's spirit of innovation, a force that continues to shape a more sustainable and resilient future,' said Sriram Kannan, Founder and CEO, Routematic. 'As we pioneer AI and data-driven, eco-conscious mobility solutions, we witness every day how technology can reimagine urban transport, making it cleaner, smarter, and more efficient.' According to Rupesh Kumar, Co-Founder and CTO, Suhora Technologies, technology today is no longer confined to research labs; it permeates every aspect of our lives, from defence and national security to smart farming and sustainable cities to precision healthcare and digital finance. 'The space industry, particularly the downstream segment, is no exception. AI is now revolutionising the way we process and analyse Earth observation data, making it faster, smarter, accurate and more efficient,' Rupesh Kumar added. (ANI)
