India building small language foundational models focused on distinct problems: Vaishnaw

Ashwini Vaishnaw

Along with India’s foundational large language model (LLM), the country is also looking to build foundational small language models (LLM) focused on distinct problems, union information technology (IT) Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on February 24.

“We are looking at our own digital models as well as our own smaller models, which can (solve) focused problems, distinct problems,” Vaishnaw said at the Nasscom Technology and Leadership Forum 2025.

NTLF 2025 is NASSCOM's flagship National Technology Leadership Forum where tech leaders and policymakers come together to drive digital transformation, AI innovation in India.

This development comes weeks after India announced the development of indigenous foundational AI models under the IndiaAI Mission. The government has also earmarked Rs 1,500 crore for the purpose, with multiple generative AI models in the offing and to be deployed within 10 months.

Addressing a fireside chat virtually, Vaishnaw added that the government is creating a large number of non-personal and anonymised data sets which will be giving accurate, high-quality analytic data for training India’s foundational models.

“Can we create a very strong research base? For that, we have started centers of excellence (CoEs), three of them already started, and one more is in the budget,” Vaishnaw, who is also the Union Minister of Railways of India, said.

Since data is of utmost importance in AI, Vaishnaw pointed out that India’s structured data in Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) will help it “stand out” in the coming months and years.

He also added that the government is using AI in DPI layers, such as in Digi Yatra, Aadhaar, and UPI. “And the results have been phenomenal. The power of DPI actually can get multiplied 10X, 15X, 100x and we use AI in here… that's going to be a huge win for us because we have that base already,” he further said.

Vaishnaw added that the government is following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision that the benefit of AI should not be limited to a handful of companies and must be accessible to a larger sector.

Vaishnaw also announced that Japan has given a patent to India’s gateway system in Unified Payments Interface (UPI).