IndiaAI Mission-Backed Avataar.ai Launches Indigenous Video AI Model Varya

Indian AI startup Avataar.ai has launched Varya, an indigenous video-generation model designed to reduce the cost of creating AI-generated videos while better representing India’s cultural, linguistic, and regional diversity.

The launch marks one of the latest efforts under the government’s IndiaAI Mission initiative to build homegrown AI capabilities and reduce reliance on expensive foreign models. 

Avataar said Varya was developed using subsidised national AI compute infrastructure after the company was selected by the IndiaAI Mission to build indigenous foundation AI technologies.

According to the company, Varya can generate videos from text prompts or images and allows users to extend generated clips into longer sequences. The model is designed for applications across education, commerce, governance, citizen services, digital storytelling, and India's vast MSME sector.

“The launch of one of the foundational models supported under the IndiaAI Mission marks a significant milestone in India's AI journey,” said S Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

“Varya represents the kind of research-led capability building that we seek to enable,” he added.

A key feature of the model is its focus on efficiency. Avataar said it uses a distillation technique that reduces the video-generation process from 50 computational steps to just four. Based on the company’s internal benchmarks, the model can generate video at approximately ₹ 0.48 per second, making it up to 10 times more cost-efficient than several leading global video-generation models.

“It is a proud moment that reflects our commitment to building indigenous AI capabilities and fostering a vibrant deep-tech ecosystem,” Krishnan said. “Through strategic support for foundational models, we are enabling innovation at scale and creating the building blocks for the next generation of AI solutions.”

Avataar CEO and Co-Founder Sravanth Aluru said the future of India’s AI ecosystem would depend as much on affordability as on raw model capability.

“India's AI opportunity will not be defined only by the largest models. It will also be defined by the most efficient models,” Aluru said.

“Varya demonstrates that frontier-quality video AI can be made dramatically more efficient and accessible. For a country of 1.4 billion people, affordability is not a feature, it is a prerequisite.”

The company said Varya has been trained to understand and generate visuals that reflect India’s diverse regions, festivals, communities, and public spaces, addressing a common criticism that many global generative AI systems are optimised primarily for Western datasets.

Aluru argued that India’s competitive advantage in AI may come from building efficient and context-aware systems rather than competing solely on model size.

“Affordable AI is inclusive AI,” he said. “Indian companies can compete globally not by simply building bigger models, but by building more efficient, context-aware models that expand access."

Founded in 2014, Bengaluru-based Avataar was co-founded by Aluru and Gaurav Baid and has raised more than $55 million from investors, including Tiger Global and Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India)

The company said it plans to release a technical report detailing Varya’s architecture, distillation methodology, and benchmark results in the coming weeks.