Desi Intelligence Goes Global: Inside India’s Race to Build a Homegrown GPT

India is betting big and risky, historically, on developing its own generative AI model—a risky move, one that aims to challenge global behemoths like OpenAI's ChatGPT and China's DeepSeek. Backed by a government initiative of ₹10,000-crore and a massive public-private initiative, India's very own homegrown AI foundational model—popularly known as 'BharatGPT'—will be rolled out in the next 10 months.

 

Key Highlights

Government-Initiated Mission: The India AI Mission, approved with a budget of ₹10,000 crores, is at the forefront, offering AI compute power to startups, researchers, and academia.

 

Massive Compute Infrastructure: India provisioned over 18,000 high-performance GPUs (e.g., NVIDIA H100/H200 and MI325) and exceeded the goal, beating DeepSeek's 2,500 GPUs, giving Indian developers access to cutting-edge tools for model training.

 

Inclusive & Multilingual Orientation: The AI system is being designed to cater to India's large linguistic and cultural diversity, with a special focus on local languages, regional idioms, and context comprehension.

 

Public-Private Partnership: Six of India's largest builders, including leading startups and IT behemoths such as Infosys, are collaborating with government departments to develop the base model.

 

Open Access & Democratization: A shared compute facility will allow researchers and startups to utilize powerful GPUs at reasonable costs, democratizing AI development and fueling innovation across the ecosystem.

 

BharatGPT Launch: Launched in the second half of 2023, BharatGPT has already seen meteoric uptake, especially in rural India, with a 220% increase in voice support adoption in just eight months.

 

Global Acclaim: India's indigenous solution is attracting international acclaim from fellow developing nations as the BharatGPT model is under consideration to serve as a template for multilingual, inclusive AI.

 

What's Next?

With the groundwork already established and development already in progress, India is planning to have its first indigenous generative AI model ready in early 2026. This will not only enhance India's digital sovereignty but also potentially establish new global benchmarks for responsible, citizen-centric, and culturally relevant AI. 

 

Source: Inc42, Business Today, India Today, Times of India, VAR India, LinkedIn/Cyfuture