ENA Sectors 2025-11-26 13:02:32 <p><span style="font-size:14px"><strong>Mumbai, Nov 26 (KNN)</strong> Union Minister of State for Science &amp; Technology Dr. Jitendra Singh praised BharatGen, calling it Indias first sovereign multilingual and multimodal Large Language Model (LLM), during his visit to IIT Bombay.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:14px">BharatGen is being built as a national AI infrastructure supporting over 22 Indian languages across text, speech, and document-vision formats. The project aligns with Indias push for indigenous deep-tech and culturally rooted AI systems. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:14px">The project is funded with Rs 235 crore under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS) programme through IIT Bombays Technology Innovation Hub.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:14px">It also includes Bharat Data Sagar, a sovereign dataset repository aimed at strengthening Indias digital autonomy.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:14px">The minister reviewed several released models, such as Param-1 (a 2.9B-parameter text model), Shrutam (speech recognition), Sooktam (text-to-speech in nine languages), and Patram (Indias first document-vision model). </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:14px">Demonstrations included Krishi Sathi for voice-based farm advisories and e-VikrAI, which generates product descriptions from a single image. Docbodh, a Patram-powered platform that simplifies complex documents, was also showcased.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:14px">BharatGen is collaborating with IBM, Zoho, NASSCOM, various ministries including the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, and state governments like Maharashtra. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:14px">Recently, the project secured an additional Rs 1,058 crore under the India AI Mission, bringing total government support to Rs 1,293 crore.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:14px">Calling BharatGen a major step toward technological self-reliance, Dr. Singh said the initiative reflects the vision of inclusive, India-centric AI, and urged the team to continue building globally competitive yet widely accessible models.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:14px"><em><strong>(KNN Bureau)</strong></em></span></p> 44203 https://knnindia.co.in/news/newsdetails/sectors/bharatgen-marks-major-step-in-indias-ai-self-reliance-says-jitendra-singh 2025-11-26 13:02:32 knnindia.co.in