IBM and BharatGen Forge New AI Partnership to Propel India’s Digital Transformation
In a groundbreaking move set to revolutionize the landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) in India, IBM and BharatGen have entered into a strategic collaboration to develop and promote the use of AI technologies tailored to India’s unique cultural and linguistic needs. Announced on September 17, 2025, this partnership aims to harness the power of AI to drive technological advancement across diverse sectors, including education, agriculture, banking, healthcare, and citizen services.
The central focus of this initiative is the development and scaling of multimodal and language-specific AI models. These models are designed to cater to India’s diverse linguistic and cultural environment, leveraging BharatGen’s expertise in creating AI that reflects the country’s unique characteristics and IBM’s strong background in AI data governance and model training technologies.
Key Objectives of the Collaboration
The partnership between IBM and BharatGen is structured around several key objectives:
- Development of Indic Use Case Solutions: By combining BharatGen’s models and data with IBM’s AI technologies, including the advanced IBM Granite Models, the collaboration aims to create solution templates specifically tailored for Indian contexts.
- Creation of Demonstrations and Use Case Templates: The collaboration will focus on developing demonstrations and templates in targeted domains using IBM’s Watsonx and Red Hat OpenShift AI platforms. These efforts are designed to showcase the potential applications and benefits of AI technologies in real-world scenarios.
- Building Scalable Data Pipelines: Utilizing selected open-source tools from IBM, the partnership will work to enhance data preparation workflows with Indic-specific capabilities. This includes implementing a governance framework based on IBM’s enterprise-scale model development methodology, ensuring responsible and ethical AI model development.
- Establishing New Benchmarks: The collaboration will involve creating benchmarks specifically suited for Indic domains and languages, facilitating better evaluation and improvement of AI models in these contexts.
- Researching Emerging Model Architectures: Leveraging the expertise of both IBM and BharatGen in high-performance generative AI models, the partnership will explore new and emerging model architectures and technologies to further advance AI capabilities.
A Vision for India’s Digital Future
Professor Ganesh Ramakrishnan of BharatGen emphasized the importance of creating AI systems that resonate with India’s rich linguistic and cultural diversity. He noted that the collaboration with IBM provides a unique opportunity to integrate cutting-edge global research and scalable architectures into AI systems that are inclusive and beneficial for India. The goal is to use AI as a transformative tool for empowering India’s digital journey across various domains, including agriculture, finance, education, and governance.
Sandip Patel, Managing Director of IBM India and South Asia, echoed this sentiment, highlighting IBM’s commitment to developing open, trustworthy AI solutions that address real-world problems. By collaborating with BharatGen, IBM aims to cultivate AI capabilities that reflect India’s diversity, delivering meaningful impacts across multiple sectors.
BharatGen’s Roadmap for AI Development
BharatGen’s roadmap for developing large language models (LLMs) and foundational models is designed to address both national and commercial needs. A key focus is on including underserved Indian languages and dialects beyond the top 12–22, ensuring broader digital participation and equity. This approach aligns with BharatGen’s mission to create AI models that are not only technologically advanced but also culturally and linguistically relevant to India.
About BharatGen
BharatGen operates under the Technology Innovation Hub at IIT Bombay and is an Indian Government-funded initiative supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST). The organization is dedicated to building AI models for Indian languages, creating a multilingual data repository, fostering public-private partnerships for scalable AI, and strengthening India’s AI talent pool and startup ecosystem. BharatGen’s efforts are aimed at representing underserved languages, creating sovereign models for self-reliance, and developing solutions for national importance across various sectors.
About IBM
IBM is a global leader in hybrid cloud and AI technologies, providing consulting expertise to clients in over 175 countries. The company helps organizations capitalize on data insights, streamline business processes, reduce costs, and gain a competitive edge in their industries. IBM’s innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions, and consulting services offer open and flexible options to clients, backed by a long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity, and service.
This collaboration between IBM and BharatGen marks a significant step towards leveraging AI for national development, fostering a digital ecosystem that is inclusive, diverse, and reflective of India’s unique identity. As the partnership progresses, it is expected to set new standards for AI development and application, ultimately contributing to India’s ongoing digital transformation.
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