BharatGen launches 17B AI model in 22 Indian languages

BharatGen, a sovereign AI initiative supported under the IndiaAI Mission, has announced the launch of BharatGen Param2, a 17-billion-parameter model supporting 22 Indian languages. The multilingual Mixture of Experts (MoE) foundational model has been developed in India and is scheduled to go live at the India AI Impact Summit 2026.

Param2 17B has been trained extensively on Indian datasets and optimised for multiple Indic languages. The model is intended to support applications across sectors including enterprise, governance, education, healthcare and agriculture.

At the summit, BharatGen will present sector-focused demonstrations developed in collaboration with government and industry partners.

In governance, the initiative includes MahaGPT, developed with MITRA, Government of Maharashtra, for use in urban development and revenue departments. Other projects include a multimodal platform for the Department of Water and Sanitation under the central government, and AI-enabled systems for the Government of Goa through Goa Electronics Limited.

In healthcare, the Medsum application by Mata Amrita Technologies uses BharatGen models to support interactions between doctors and patients.

In education, a solution developed with the Kotak Education Foundation assesses spoken English fluency and communication skills using AI-generated evaluation metrics.

In the area of cultural preservation, Gyan Bharatam, a Ministry of Culture initiative, uses AI-based optical character recognition (OCR) and conversational tools to digitise and provide access to historical documents across 22 Indian languages. The National Archives of India is also deploying AI tools to improve access to archival records.

In financial services, applications include an AI-based policy explainer for an insurance provider, an underwriting support system designed to assist with risk assessment and fraud detection, and a conversational interface for the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) to help users navigate regulatory frameworks.

Rishi Bal, Chief Executive Officer of BharatGen, said the initiative is focused on developing AI systems that function across Indian languages and sectors, with an emphasis on real-world deployment in public services, finance, healthcare and education.

BharatGen has been supported with government-backed high-performance computing infrastructure under the IndiaAI Mission. The programme is developing large-scale mixture-of-experts models with capabilities in reasoning, mathematics and coding. At the summit, BharatGen will present its multilingual AI models across text, speech and vision applications, supported by Bharat Data Sagar, a research-led data repository built from curated public and private datasets.