AI startup Sarvam.AI bags $41 million in funding led by Lightspeed, Peak XV, others

The startup aims to create population-scale impact layering Gen AI on top of the highly successful India stack specifically for public-good applications.

Homegrown generative artificial intelligence (AI) startup, Sarvam AI has raised $41 million in its Series A funding round led by Lightspeed Ventures with participation from Peak XV Partners and Khosla Ventures.

The AI firm plans to use the funding to focus on India-specific offerings which includes training AI models to support the diverse set of Indian languages and voice-first interfaces, the firm said in a media statement on December 7.

Founded in July 2023 by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, who previously worked at Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani-backed AI4Bharat, Sarvam develops a full-stack offering for Generative AI, ranging from research-led innovations in training custom AI models to an enterprise-grade platform for authoring and deployment.

Raghavan, an entrepreneur and technologist who was instrumental in building Digital Public Goods (DPGs) like Aadhaar, said that Sarvam will work with Indian enterprises to co-develop domain-specific AI models leveraging their data.

The startup aims to create population-scale impact layering Gen AI on top of the highly successful India stack specifically for public-good applications.

Generative AI is a type of AI technology that can produce various types of content, including text, imagery, audio and synthetic data, and conversational AI refers to technologies like chatbots or virtual agents to which users can talk to.

It has been the buzzword and has even attracted software giants like SAP, Salesforce, and IBM to explore this space. While the West has been fast to adopt the same, Indian SaaS and tech companies are now getting on the generative AI bus.

The funding for Sarvam comes at a time when a host of investors are betting big on Generative AI startups in India.

In fact, the rapid adoption and rise in demand for generative AI tools like ChatGPT, has resulted in rising number of Indian GenAI-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) startups which has more than doubled since 2021. The fims have raised more than $590 million in funding as of May 2023, according to a report by SaaSBoomi and McKinsey.

"Vivek’s expertise in building large scale systems with Pratyush’s domain expertise in AI makes them uniquely positioned to build population scale AI applications. Large scale adoption of AI in India will require not only building uniquely Indian use cases but also delivering them at prices that everyone can afford and we believe the Sarvam team is best positioned to accomplish this," said Harshjit Sethi, Managing Director, Peak XV.