Bengaluru AI Startup Sarvam Scoops Up Rs 340 Crore In Funding

Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence startup Sarvam has raised about Rs 340 crore ($41 million) in its first major funding round.

"This funding, led by Lightspeed and supported by Peak XV Partners and Khosla Ventures, represents the largest raise at this stage for an Indian AI startup," it said in a statement.

Sarvam AI has been in stealth mode since it was founded five months ago by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar.

Raghavan has been working for a decade in building digital public infrastructure at Unique Identification Authority of India, which is the authority overseeing Aadhaar. While, Kumar worked at AI4Bharat, a Nandan Nilekani-backed initiative of IIT Madras, which is building open-source language AI for Indian languages.

The startup aims 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 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," the statement said.

Sarvam AI will train AI models to support Indian languages and voice-first interfaces. "The company will also work with Indian enterprises to co-build domain-specific AI models on their data. Finally, the company aims to create population-scale impact, layering GenAI on top of the highly successful India stack, specifically for public-good applications," it said.

"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," Vivek Raghavan said.

"We see several countries having sovereign efforts to build GenAI models, given its strategic importance. We need companies like Sarvam AI to develop deep expertise for building AI in and for India," said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. He was also an early backer of Sam Altman's OpenAI.