Sarvam AI: Meet the founders building India's answer to ChatGPT
What's the story
Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Sarvam AI has gained significant attention with its notable model, Sarvam Vision. The model recently outperformed tech giants like Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) benchmarks. But the success of this homegrown start-up isn't just about technology; it's also about the vision and dedication of its two co-founders, Pratyush Kumar and Vivek Raghavan.
Profile
Kumar's journey from research to AI entrepreneurship
Kumar, the CEO and co-founder of Sarvam AI, is a researcher and engineer with a PhD from ETH Zurich and a Bachelor's degree from IIT Bombay. Before starting Sarvam AI, he worked at Microsoft Research and IBM Research. He has also been an Adjunct Faculty Member at IIT Madras. Kumar has led projects like AI4Bharat, which develops Indian-language AI tools, and PadhAI, an affordable online learning platform.
Experience
Raghavan's extensive experience in Electronic Design Automation
Raghavan, the co-founder of Sarvam AI, has over 20 years of experience in Electronic Design Automation (EDA). He has founded and sold two EDA companies and held senior leadership roles at Magma Design Automation, Synopsys, and Avant! Corporation. Beyond his industry experience, Raghavan has contributed to India's digital governance ecosystem by serving on the AI Committee of the Supreme Court of India.
Achievement
Sarvam Vision's impressive performance and significance
Sarvam Vision's success isn't just about its technical prowess but also what it stands for: world-class AI innovation from India. The model has wowed experts by outperforming larger and better-funded global AI systems on the OCR benchmark. This is a key metric of an AI model's ability to extract and interpret text from complex images and documents, making it crucial for everything from document scanning and digital archiving to accessibility tools and language translation.
Vision
A new era of sovereign AI
Sarvam AI's ambition goes beyond a single benchmark. The company is developing foundational AI models entirely in India, with a focus on Indian languages, accessibility, and local use cases. As global interest in "sovereign AI," or AI developed and owned within national borders, continues to rise, Sarvam AI is positioning itself as a pioneer of this movement. This comes after the country announced India Semiconductor Mission 2.0 during the Budget 2026-2027.