As India sharpens its focus on homegrown artificial intelligence, BharatGen is preparing to launch a large multilingual AI model named Param2 at the India AI Impact Summit 2026. The summit is scheduled to begin on February 16 in New Delhi.
Param2 is a 17-billion-parameter model designed to support 22 Indian languages. It is being positioned as part of India’s wider effort to build “sovereign” AI systems that are trained on domestic data and operate on local infrastructure. The model is being developed under the BharatGen consortium, which functions from the Technology Innovation Hub at IIT Bombay and is supported by the Department of Science and Technology. The initiative falls under the larger IndiaAI Mission, which is funding compute infrastructure, data platforms, and model development for national and public-sector AI projects.
Described as a “mixture of experts” model, Param2 is trained on Indian-language datasets and is built to handle text, speech, and vision tasks. Unlike traditional text-only systems, it is designed as a multi-modal model with broader application scope.
BharatGen said Param2 will be showcased at the summit through sector-specific applications created with government and industry partners. These demonstrations will cover governance, healthcare, education, cultural digitisation, and financial services. Use cases include systems for urban development and revenue departments, healthcare tools for doctor–patient interaction, and platforms for digitising and accessing archival and cultural records. The consortium added that the model is also being trained to support reasoning, maths, and code-related tasks. Training is being carried out using infrastructure provided under the IndiaAI Mission, along with data sourced from the Bharat Data Sagar repository.
The focus on a large multilingual model reflects a broader policy direction in India’s public AI programmes. Government services operate across multiple languages and formats, including text, scanned documents, and speech. English-first, text-only systems often fail to meet these needs. Multilingual models aim to close this gap by enabling a single system to work across languages without heavy reliance on manual translation. This approach explains why platforms like BHASHINI and initiatives such as Adi Vaani and BharatGen have prioritised language coverage from the start.
Param2 also builds on BharatGen’s earlier releases in text, speech recognition, text-to-speech, and document understanding, extending them into a general-purpose multilingual AI system aligned with India’s “sovereign AI” goals.
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