Ever since OpenAI’s ChatGPT rose to prominence, Generative AI has truly become mainstream. Bypassing deep-tech discussions, entreprenuers globally have found ways to use generative AI to do all sorts of things, thus catapulting humanity’s otherwise slow transition to AI-enabled devices and services.
India, though not as prominent in the space as some other tech powerhouses globally, is catching up fast, with several AI startups sprouting across the country, trying to use existing, open-source generative-AI tools to build products. One such startup is Sarvam.AI, with an aim to develop a full stack suite of gen-AI tools , tailored to needs of Indian audience. The startup has now announced a $41Mn Series A round towards that mission, led by Lightspeed with participation from Peak XV Partners and Khosla Ventures.
Sarvam AI’s ambitious plan is to develop the “full-stack” for Generative AI ranging from research-led innovations in training custom AI models to an enterprise-grade platform for authoring and deployment. The company believes that this full-stack approach will accelerate adoption of GenAI in India, especially given that enterprises see the potential of GenAI but are grappling with how to leverage it for their business.
Vivek Raghavan, co-founder of Sarvam AI, with past experience in building India’s impressive digital public infrastructure including Aadhaar says, “I have seen first hand the enormous value in innovating at foundational layers and deploying at population scale. India has demonstrated that it can harness technology differently, and with GenAI we have an opportunity to reimagine how this technology can add value to people’s lives.”
In terms of actual development, the company is yet to release any of its AI models yet. It is also not clear as to what all would this “full stack” of GenAI comprise. But from whatever little information is available on their website, their first target is to build an enterprise-grade platform that lets comapnies develop and evaluate their GenAI apps.
Additionally, the startup aims to contribute heavily to open-source models and datasets, with a special focus on the public-good space.
