India must build its own AI tech to avert risk of becoming 'digital colony': Sarvam AI co-founder

New Delhi (PTI): India must build its own foundational AI technologies to avoid becoming a "digital colony" dependent on foreign systems, Vivek Raghavan, co-founder of Sarvam AI, said on Friday.

He believes that AI is a core technology that will shape every aspect of life, therefore, India has a mandate, not an option, to develop it from scratch.

"AI is a technology that has an impact on every single aspect of human life. It is a core technology that a country like India must understand from the foundational level; otherwise, we will become a digital colony dependent on other countries for this core, core technology. That is not an option. It is something that we must do," Raghavan said, while speaking at India AI Impact Summit 2026.

He stressed that in the long run, AI sovereignty matters more than temporary technical advantages, such as having the largest model or fastest chip.

According to him, India's strengths lie in linguistic and cultural diversity (22 official languages and many dialects); demand from a large population and economy; and cost-conscious innovation which helps create affordable AI solutions.

He said that Sarvam AI is building a full-stack sovereign AI platform comprising sovereign models -- built entirely from scratch with no external dependencies, including multilingual speech recognition and text-to-speech models optimised for Indian languages.

The co-founder stressed that these world-class models were built by a small team of young Indian engineers, proving that India has the talent to lead in AI. His broader belief is that India can create a new AI model -- one that is inclusive, affordable, and globally adoptable -- just as it did with UPI and digital public infrastructure.

On Wednesday, the sovereign AI model developer announced plans to launch made-in-India smart eyewear by May this year. The company announced a partnership with HMD, a mobile phone maker, to bring AI technology to feature phones.