Indic AI for inclusion

Vernacular AI enables access to education, services, and commerce in India’s diverse native languages

- Tasneem Kanchwala

As India celebrates its 76th Republic Day, a quiet revolution is underway — one that promises to fulfill the constitutional promise of equality not just in law, but in digital access. While India's linguistic diversity has long been celebrated as cultural wealth, it has simultaneously created one of the most persistent barriers to technological inclusion. Today, artificial intelligence is emerging as the bridge that could finally democratise technology for over a billion Indians who think, dream, and communicate in languages other than English.

Digital paradox

The numbers tell a stark story. Despite having more than a billion native language speakers across 22 scheduled languages and hundreds of dialects, less than 1 percent of digital content exists in Indian languages. Meanwhile, 98 percent of users access content in Indic languages like Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam, and 57 percent of urban internet users prefer regional language content. This structural barrier has long excluded millions from participating fully in the digital economy.

Nakul Kundra, Co-founder & CEO of Devnagri AI, frames the challenge with clarity, "In a linguistically diverse country like India, language should never be a barrier to technology adoption or economic participation. If the digital revolution is to be truly inclusive, Al cannot remain anchored in English or a handful of global languages.”

His company has scaled its multilingual AI platform to support 22 Indian languages and their dialects, trained on hundreds of millions of data points. "Our journey has seen notable milestones from pioneering India's first enterprise-ready multilingual AI solutions, to being recognised as a top three finalist in the Government of India’s IndiaAI Innovation Challenge,” Kundra notes, adding that their AI contact center solution has been acknowledged for its potential to bridge language gaps in public services.

Leading the charge