BharatGen, India’s sovereign AI initiative, has announced the launch of BharatGen Param2 17B MoE, a 17-billion-parameter multilingual Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) foundational model, at the India AI Impact Summit 2026. The development represents a significant step in advancing India’s push toward self-reliant and inclusive artificial intelligence ecosystems.
The model is designed to support multiple Indic languages and reflects BharatGen’s broader vision of building AI systems aligned with India’s linguistic diversity, cultural context, and public-sector priorities. Developed in collaboration with NVIDIA, the training pipeline leverages NVIDIA AI Enterprise software and infrastructure, including NVIDIA NeMo open libraries and Base Command Manager for scalable model training and deployment.
Focus on sovereign and inclusive AI
Optimised for Indic language use cases, the Param2 17B model is positioned to support applications across governance, education, healthcare, agriculture, and enterprise sectors. By enabling multilingual AI capabilities at scale, the initiative aims to expand accessibility and encourage broader participation in India’s digital transformation journey.
Rishi Bal, CEO of BharatGen, described the launch as a milestone in advancing India’s sovereign AI ambitions and strengthening the country’s technology ecosystem.
Open ecosystem and developer enablement
As part of its ecosystem strategy, BharatGen plans to release models, documentation, and post-training workflows through an open repository, enabling developers and enterprises to build and fine-tune India-centric AI solutions more rapidly. The initiative is expected to support startups, research institutions, and enterprises working on AI applications tailored to local needs.
Backed by Government and academic collaboration
BharatGen operates as a consortium under the Technology Innovation Hub at IIT Bombay and is supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST). The programme focuses on building large language and multimodal models for Indian languages, creating multilingual datasets, and strengthening India’s AI talent and innovation ecosystem.
The unveiling underscores India’s growing emphasis on sovereign AI infrastructure, multilingual innovation, and public-private collaboration to advance the next phase of digital transformation.
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