BharatGen to launch 17-billion-parameter multilingual AI model at India AI Impact Summit

BharatGen, a government-backed consortium developing sovereign artificial intelligence systems, will launch a 17-billion-parameter multilingual foundation model supporting 22 Indian languages at the India AI Impact Summit 2026.

The model, called Param2 17B, has been built from the ground up by BharatGen and is designed as a Mixture of Experts (MoE) system trained extensively on Indian data, the consortium said.

The launch marks a key step in India’s efforts to build domestic AI capabilities aligned with its “Viksit Bharat 2047” vision of technological self-reliance.

“The launch of Param2 17B is more than a technical milestone; it is the cornerstone of a mission to build India-first AI supporting 22 Indian languages and trained extensively on Indian data,” BharatGen said.

The models are aimed at use cases across enterprise, governance, education, healthcare and agriculture, with demonstrations planned in partnership with government and industry stakeholders.

Rishi Bal, CEO of BharatGen, said the initiative was focused on language inclusion and real-world deployment.

“India’s AI progress must be built on language access and contextual understanding. BharatGen is developing AI systems that work naturally across Indian languages and sectors,” Bal said.

“These models are designed for real deployment across citizen services, finance, healthcare, and education, while strengthening India’s sovereign AI capability. The summit showcase will provide fast go-to-market pathways, along with open access for developers, startups, researchers, and enterprises building AI solutions for India and beyond,” he added.

BharatGen is supported under the IndiaAI Mission and has received government-backed high-performance computing infrastructure. The consortium said it is advancing large-scale MoE models capable of reasoning, mathematics and code generation.

At the summit, the consortium will present sovereign multilingual AI systems spanning text, speech and vision, powered by “Bharat Data Sagar”, a research-led data repository built through curated public and private datasets.