🚀 “Why should AI speak only English?”
That question changed everything.
In late 2023, at a small cafe in Bengaluru, two engineers — Vishwajeet Singh and Pratyush Kumar — stared at a whiteboard covered in scribbles.
- LLMs are powerful, but they don’t understand India.
- 70% of Indians don’t speak English.
- Voice is the real interface for India.
While Silicon Valley raced to build the “smartest” AI…
They wanted to build the most accessible.
“If AI can’t understand my grandmother, what’s the point?”
— Vishwajeet Singh, Co-Founder, Sarvam AI
And that’s how Sarvam AI was born.
Not as just another AI startup.
But as a mission — to build AI that speaks Bharat.
🌱 The Beginning
Before Sarvam AI existed, both founders were solving problems that shaped India:
- Pratyush Kumar worked at AI4Bharat (IIT Madras), building datasets for Indian languages.
- Vishwajeet Singh spent years at Amazon Alexa, obsessed with voice as an interface.
They asked themselves:
“India skipped desktops → jumped to mobile.
Can India skip text interfaces → jump to voice-first AI?”
This wasn’t about creating the next ChatGPT.
This was about flipping the script.
Instead of people adapting to AI,
AI adapts to people.
🌏 Why India Needed Sarvam
There are 22 official Indian languages.
1.4 billion people.
Hundreds of dialects.
But the digital world speaks… one language.
English.
71% of Indians cannot have a conversation in English.
Yet 100% of mainstream AI assumes English input.
Sarvam realized something no one else noticed:
- India’s next internet users aren’t going to search on Google.
- They will ask questions using voice.
- In their language.
Sarvam called their approach:
“AI for 1 billion.”
Not 1 million early adopters.
1 billion everyday users.
💡 What They Built
Instead of typing text prompts…
“AI… show me government loan schemes… in Telugu.”
Instead of translating…
AI answers in Telugu, as if talking to a friend.
Instead of typing long queries in English…
“AI… write job application email… Hindi mein.”
Sarvam named their core technology:
Bhasha LLM — India’s first voice-first and language-first LLM.
They didn’t build an “English model fine-tuned on Hindi data.”
They built a ground-up Indian LLM.
💰 The Funding Moment That Shocked India
In less than one year, Sarvam AI raised:
$82 million+
from Peak XV, Lightspeed, and Khosla Ventures.
Khosla Ventures also funded OpenAI.
For the first time, a top Silicon Valley VC said:
“We are betting on India-first AI.”
A unicorn wasn’t born.
A belief was born:
“India can build foundational AI, not just apps.”
🥇 What Makes Them Different (in one line)
| Company | Focus |
|---|---|
| OpenAI | Best AI in the world |
| Sarvam AI | Best AI for India |
Sarvam is building for:
- Agriculture
- Banking
- Hospitals
- Education
- Government
Not apps for India.
Infrastructure for India.
📌 The Revenue Model
Sarvam doesn’t sell hype.
They sell solutions.
✅ APIs for businesses (voice → voice LLM)
✅ AI automation for BFSI, education, healthcare
✅ Custom language models for enterprises
Their pitch is brutally simple:
“Talk to your data. In your language.”
🌠 Why Sarvam Will Win
Because they are not building AI for the world to admire.
They are building AI for people to use.
India already proved this playbook:
- UPI → democratized payments
- ONDC → democratizing commerce
- Sarvam AI → democratizing AI
India doesn’t follow.
India leapfrogs.
💬 Final Thought
“One day, AI will speak every language.
But the first voice it learns… should be India’s.”
— Sarvam AI Team
And that is why Sarvam AI matters.
Not because they’re building a unicorn.
But because they’re building a bridge between AI and 1 billion Indians.
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