Google, IIT Bombay team up to build Indic language AI speech models

Google has partnered with BharatGen at IIT Bombay to build AI models for Indian languages, support local startups, offer free AI tools to students, and expand training for developers in India

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Google is joining hands with BharatGen at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay to develop speech recognition and text-to-speech models in Indian languages. The announcement was made by Manish Gupta, senior director for India and Asia-Pacific (APAC) at Google DeepMind, on Wednesday, according to a report by the Press Trust of India.

 

He was speaking at the Google I/O Connect India 2025 in Bengaluru, where the company unveiled a range of new initiatives and AI tools aimed at supporting India’s growing developer and startup community.

BharatGen: A landmark Indian AI project

In 2024, the Indian government launched BharatGen, an initiative to bring generative AI to citizens in multiple Indian languages. At the launch event, MoS Jitendra Singh had described it as the world’s first state-funded project of this kind.

 

Led by IIT Bombay under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS), the project is developing advanced AI systems that can generate high-quality text and multimodal content in Indian languages.

Real-world impact of AI in India

At the event, Gupta also highlighted India’s progress in using AI to create practical solutions that are “benefiting millions of people and businesses both within the country and globally”.

 

He added that Google has been working with local communities to use DeepMind’s research to address important challenges in areas such as energy, medicine, and materials science. 

 

“For instance, 150,000 researchers across India are using AlphaFold to help solve some of humanity’s most complex challenges, from autoimmune diseases to cancer,” Gupta said.

 

He also mentioned Google’s recent announcement that the AI Pro Plan subscription will be made available free of charge for students across India for one year.

 

According to Gupta, the company’s Gemma models are also playing a key role in advancing India’s AI goals. He said, “Sarvam, Soket AI and Gnani, which have been selected by the India AI Mission, are building the next generation of Make in India AI models based on Gemma.”

Indian startups building on Google’s AI models

Google has been working closely with Sarvam, the startup behind the Sarvam-Translate model, which uses Gemma to translate long-form content between languages, Gupta added.

 

At the event, Google also revealed that it is expanding access to up-to-date and detailed information on Google Maps, which now includes over 250 million places. This will help developers design better generative AI features.

 

Currently, India has the second-largest number of active developers on Google Play worldwide, with more than 1 million developer jobs created in 2024.

 

To support this growing talent base, Google launched the ‘Google Play x Unity Game Developer Training’ — a free and globally recognised training and certification programme for both aspiring and professional game developers in India.

 

The company also announced the Gen AI Exchange Hackathon, which aims to give developers an opportunity to apply their AI expertise to real-world challenges, innovate, and build new solutions.