, while the world watches Silicon Valley giants battle it out, a Bengaluru-based startup is quietly winning big right here at home. Sarvam AI isn’t trying to copy ChatGPT—it’s building AI made for real India, and it’s beating global models at their own game in key areas.
What Makes Sarvam AI Different?
Founded in 2023 by Dr. Vivek Raghavan (the Aadhaar pioneer) and Dr. Pratyush Kumar, Sarvam AI saw a simple truth: global AIs struggle with India’s messy mix of languages, accents, street noise, and code-switching.
We don’t speak “pure” Hindi or Tamil—we blend them, throw in English, and talk over fans or traffic. Sarvam AI decided to fix that.
The Power of Sovereign AI
The Indian government picked Sarvam AI in 2025 to build the country’s first homegrown large language model. They gave the team thousands of NVIDIA H100 GPUs. The goal? India controls its own AI—trained on Indian data, following Indian laws, running on Indian servers. That’s what “Sovereign AI” means.
Where Sarvam AI Actually Beats the Giants
Recent tests show Sarvam AI models winning in India-specific tasks.
| Category | Sarvam AI Result | Beats Global Models |
|---|---|---|
| OCR & Vision | 84.3% accuracy on olmOCR-Bench | Surpassed Gemini 1.5 Pro & GPT-4o |
| Voice & Audio | Lower Word Error Rate in native speech | Better than Gemini-3-Flash on Hinglish & accents |
| Efficiency | Sarvam-1 (2B params) 4–6x faster | Outperformed Llama 3.1 8B on Indic TriviaQA |
The Product Lineup That Feels Made for India Sarvam AI
isn’t just one model. Here’s what they offer:
- OpenHathi – First strong Hindi LLM, matches GPT-3.5 level but feels local.
- Sarvam-1 – Tiny 2-billion parameter model that handles 10 major Indian languages (Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, and more).
- Sarvam Agents – Voice helpers that work over WhatsApp or calls for banking, farming tips, and more.
- Shuka 1.0 – Open-source audio model that turns noisy Indian speech into accurate text.
Why This Matters for Everyday People
Global models are heavy and costly to run at scale. Sarvam AI builds lean models that work on low bandwidth and cheap phones. That means AI can reach village schools, small shops, and farmers—not just city offices.
Co-founder Vivek Raghavan says it best: India can use tech in its own way. Sarvam AI isn’t here to write fancy poems—it’s here to explain government schemes in a farmer’s mother tongue or read a land document in Marathi.
Also Read: Silver Rate Today 9 February 2026: Big Jump After Last Week’s Sharp Fall
ChatGPT and Gemini still lead in creative writing or coding. But when it comes to reading Indian documents, handling mixed languages, understanding heavy accents, or running cheap AI for millions—Sarvam AI is showing the world that “Made in India” can be technically better, not just patriotic.
This Bengaluru startup proves local roots plus smart engineering can challenge the biggest names. And for India’s next billion users, that’s a game-changer.
Hari Dhage is a passionate tech writer and a Computer Engineering student with a strong interest in emerging technologies, smartphones, gadgets, and digital trends. With a solid technical background and a curiosity for innovation, he simplifies complex tech topics into clear, engaging, and reader-friendly articles. Through his writing on CrickDuniya.in, Hari aims to keep readers informed with accurate, up-to-date tech news, comparisons, and insights that matter in everyday digital life.
