Indian Govt Receives 67 Proposals to Build Foundational Models

Ever since China’s DeepSeek made its mark on the global AI space, India has been exploring building its own foundational models.

This is important, especially considering the security issues revolving around DeepSeek.

India recently received a significant boost with a ₹2,000 crore investment in the Union Budget 2025 for the IndiaAI mission. In January, the mission also started inviting startups, entrepreneurs, and researchers to collaborate on building foundational AI models trained on Indian datasets.

Moreover, at the  Utkarsh Odisha Conclave held last month, IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said, “Very soon, we will have our own large language model (LLM).”

Now, it seems that the proposals for it have started coming in, as reported by The Indian Express.

A senior government official reportedly said that the Centre had obtained at least 67 proposals to build an AI model focused on India, 20 of which were LLMs.

It is also known that the electronics and IT ministry is organising a high-level technical committee to evaluate the proposals. The committee will include external domain experts, who will review the proposals and decide whether to accept or reject them within a month.

The report further states that Sarvam AI, CoRover.ai, and Ola are some of the prominent names among the proposals that have expressed interest in building a foundational model.

A government official, under the condition of anonymity, told The Indian Express, “Of the total 67 proposals, 20 proposals have been received for building LLMs. The remaining are sector-specific small language models, including one which has been created by a group of doctors to assist medical professionals working on breast cancer issues.”

With the proposals arriving, it seems that the process of building India’s own foundational model should start soon. It will be exciting to see the outcome of when that happens.