For years, the AI conversation has sounded the same. Big breakthroughs from the US. Massive investments from China. India is mostly seen as a place where global tech companies hire talent or build back offices.
That story is now starting to crack. A Bengaluru-based startup called Sarvam AI is doing something many thought would take much longer, building core AI models in India that can outperform global giants like ChatGPT and Google Gemini in specific, real-world tasks that matter deeply to Indian users. And the world is taking notice. What is Sarvam AI, and why is everyone suddenly talking about it? Founded in 2023, Sarvam AI is an Indian startup focused on what it calls “sovereign AI” — artificial intelligence that is built in India, trained on Indian data, and designed for Indian languages and use cases. Instead of trying to copy everything ChatGPT or Gemini does, Sarvam took a more focused approach. It asked a simple question:
What are global AI models still bad at when it comes to India? The answer was clear: Indian languages, documents, accents, and messy real-world data.
This week, Sarvam AI grabbed headlines after two of its models showed exceptional performance: Sarvam vision: Why this OCR model is beating ChatGPT and Gemini OCR is the technology that allows computers to read text from images, scanned documents, PDFs, forms, and photos. It may sound basic, but in India, OCR is hard. Government forms, court documents, bills, handwritten notes, mixed-language pages, poor scans, this is where most OCR systems fail. Also read: Indian engineers now designing 2nm chips, says IT minister
How Sarvam Vision stands out According to benchmarks shared by Sarvam AI co-founder Pratyush Kumar, Sarvam Vision achieved:
What’s more impressive is where it performs well: These are exactly the cases where traditional OCR tools usually break. As Pratyush Kumar explained in a post on X, Sarvam Vision was built specifically to handle Indian-style documents, not clean, perfectly formatted samples.
From scepticism to praise: Global experts take notice Sarvam’s approach was not always appreciated. Earlier, tech commentator Deedy Das had questioned whether training smaller, Indic-language-focused models even made sense. This week, he publicly admitted he was wrong. Users echoed this sentiment. One user simply wrote: I used this a couple of days ago! Oh man wow. Also read: Global tech leaders to gather for India–AI Impact Summit 2026, here’s the list of tech giants coming to India
Bulbul V3: Giving Indian languages a natural AI voice
OCR is only half the story. Sarvam AI has also launched Bulbul V3, its most advanced text-to-speech (TTS) model so far. This puts Sarvam in direct competition with global leaders like ElevenLabs, especially in voice AI. Bulbul V3 is designed to generate natural, expressive, production-ready voices for Indian languages, not robotic, awkward-sounding speech. Currently, Bulbul V3 supports: For Indian startups, call centres, farmers’ apps, education platforms, and voice-based services, this is a big deal. Who are the people behind Sarvam AI? Pratyush Kumar: Research meets real-world India Pratyush Kumar, CEO and co-founder of Sarvam AI, has deep academic and industry roots. His work has consistently focused on making AI useful outside elite labs. Vivek Raghavan: Tech, policy, and scale Co-founder Vivek Raghavan brings more than 20 years of experience in Electronic Design Automation (EDA). He has: Beyond industry, he has played a major role in India’s digital public infrastructure: Together, Kumar and Raghavan combine deep tech, governance experience, and national-scale thinking. Also read: How microchipping can help find your lost pets
Why Sarvam AI matters beyond one benchmark Sarvam AI’s success is not just about beating ChatGPT on a scorecard. It shows that: This also fits neatly into India’s broader push for sovereign AI, especially after policy moves like: While ChatGPT and Gemini are still far ahead in areas like deep reasoning, coding, and multimodal AI, Sarvam is winning where global models haven’t focused: the everyday Indian reality. A shift in India’s AI story India’s AI journey is changing. It is no longer just about global companies opening offices here. It is about Indian startups building foundational technology that can stand up to the best in the world. Sarvam AI may not replace ChatGPT, and it doesn’t want to. Instead, it is proving that India can build AI that understands India better than anyone else
