India’s government is preparing to offer significantly higher rates for specialised AI talent as it looks to strengthen its technology capabilities. The rates can reach Rs 4,58,500 per month, or about Rs 55 lakh annually, for senior AI roles hired through empanelled supplier agencies.
The figure is higher than the basic monthly pay of a Government of India Secretary at Rs 2.25 lakh and the Cabinet Secretary at Rs 2.50 lakh under the 7th Pay Commission. However, the AI rates are supplier fees that also cover agency overheads and margins, so they are not directly comparable with civil servant salaries.
The rates are detailed in a Request for Empanelment reopened this month by the National e-Governance Division (NeGD) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The tender does not allow negotiation on the fixed rates.
The original tender was issued in November 2025 and attracted nearly 80 bidders. After evaluation, 6 firms—Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), NEC Corporation India, Kyndryl Solutions, Cactus Technology Solutions, CoRover and Innefu Labs—were empanelled in April 2026.
The panel will remain valid until April 2028, with an option for a 1-year extension. Ministries, states and PSUs can hire experts directly through it without issuing separate tenders.
The rate card fixes Rs 4,58,500 per month for an AI/Solution Architect, Data Science Lead and AI/ML Lead. Programme or Product Managers will cost Rs 4,12,500, Data Engineering Leads Rs 3,66,666, while AI/ML Engineers, Data Scientists and MLOps Leads are priced at Rs 3,20,834. Business Analysts are listed at Rs 2,16,666. GST is excluded.
Niche roles can cost 1.5 times the AI/ML Engineer rate, or nearly Rs 4.81 lakh per month. Rates can rise by up to 10% annually, but L1 rates cannot be negotiated. The proposal deadline is September 7, with technical bids opening on September 8. Firms need at least 75 out of 100 in technical scoring.
The hired experts will build an in-house, multi-tenant inference server on government infrastructure, including the NIC’s MeghRaj cloud. They will deploy open models behind stable APIs and develop tools for summarising Cabinet notes, tenders and policies, multilingual chatbots for UMANG and DigiLocker, voice-based government services, document data extraction, face verification and AI assistants for DigiLocker. Irreversible actions will require human approval.
The reopened tender also lowers the average annual turnover requirement from Rs 50 crore to Rs 25 crore, staff requirement from 200 to 100 and qualifying project value from Rs 3 crore to Rs 1 crore. The positive net-worth requirement has been removed.
MSMEs and startups recognised by DPIIT or NSIC are exempt from turnover and staff criteria. However, the technical qualification threshold has increased from 70 to 75.
Agencies receive 60% of payments monthly for manpower and 40% quarterly based on delivery. Filling a position within 15 days brings a 5% bonus on the first month’s bill.
(Sources: The Print)
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