‘Build foundational AI or risk becoming a mere consumer’

BharatGen, which has built its first model from scratch, warns of a severe talent deficit

- Yadukrishna CS.

India must build the foundational models underpinning the artificial intelligence (AI) age or risk becoming merely a consumer of the disruptive technology, according to the country’s only not-for-profit AI entity, also the largest benefactor of the government's $1.2-billion AI mission.

BharatGen, a consortium of AI labs across nine institutes, was set up by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay in December 2024 as a non-profit, and received a ₹1,058.82 crore grant under the Centre’s AI mission in September 2025. It is developing one of India’s first sovereign large language models (LLMs)—foundational AI systems that mimic human writing and speech by analysing huge data sets.

“We can only truly understand AI models when we build them from scratch,” said Ganesh Ramakrishnan, professor for computer science engineering at the IIT-Bombay and founding director of BharatGen. He explained that just as knowing a recipe allows you to tailor a dish to your health needs, knowing exactly what goes into an AI model, especially its data, is essential for building effective tools around it.