Tech Mahindra Launches 'Project Indus' LLM, Phase-1 Designed for the Hindi and Its 37+ Dialects

Tech Mahindra has just introduced Project Indus, a large language model (LLM) designed to converse in a multitude of Indian languages and dialects.

Project Indus stands out due to its focus on Indic languages and dialects, making it a unique and valuable addition to the language model landscape.

To give a comparative perspective, the well-known multilingual models like BERT, XLM are trained on a mix of languages, including English, but may not perform optimally for specific Indic languages. Project Indus, on the other hand, is tailored specifically for Indic languages, ensuring better accuracy and understanding.

Similarly, powerful LLMs like GPT-3 and GPT-4 are primarily trained on English and other major languages. Project Indus focuses on Indic linguistic diversity, addressing nuances and dialects that these models might miss.

Existing Indic-specific models such as TALNet and IndicBERT are valuable but may lack the scale and versatility of Project Indus.

In summary, Project Indus bridges the gap by offering a robust, scalable, and context-aware solution for Indian languages. Its focus on dialects and industry applications makes it a promising addition to the AI landscape.

Moreover, Tech Mahindra is collaborating with Dell Technologies and Intel to implement the project’s ‘GenAI in a box’ framework globally. As part of this collaboration, Tech Mahindra will also leverage Intel® Gaudi®AI Accelerators and AI training assets to train the future generation of Indus models as well as skill up its employees on Intel product portfolio (hardware and software) to provide GenAI expertise to its wide network of global customers across industries.

1. Foundational Model for Indic Languages:

• Project Indus is an indigenous LLM developed by Tech Mahindra.
• The first phase of Indus LLM focuses on the Hindi language and its 37+ dialects.
• It aims to provide advanced AI solutions that enable enterprises to scale rapidly.

2. Innovative Deployment Framework: GenAI in a Box:

• The Indus LLM will be implemented using an innovative framework called 'GenAI in a box'.
• This solution simplifies the deployment of advanced AI models for enterprises.
• It leverages Dell Technologies' high-performance computing solutions, storage, and networking capabilities.

3. Intel Collaboration:

• The LLM also adopts Intel-based infrastructure solutions, including Intel® Xeon® Processors and OneAPI software.
• Future generation products leveraging CPU features like Intel® Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX) are used.
• Tech Mahindra collaborates with Intel to train the future generation of Indus models and skill up its employees on Intel product portfolio.

4. Industry Applications:

• Project Indus aims to redefine AI-driven solutions across various industries.
• Use cases include customer support, experience, content creation, and more in sectors like healthcare, rural education, banking, finance, agriculture, and telecom.

5. Dell Technologies' Perspective:

Denise Millard, Chief Partner Officer at Dell Technologies, emphasizes the importance of accessibility and scalability for organizations adopting AI.

The Dell AI Factory supports LLMs like Project Indus, promoting growth, productivity, and innovation.

Tech Mahindra has been making significant strides in offering next-gen solutions to enterprises worldwide. The company recently announced that it is building an LLM to preserve Bahasa Indonesia, the official and national language of Indonesia and its dialects. This collaboration further demonstrates Tech Mahindra's commitment to enabling enterprises to scale rapidly with technological advancements, building a future where AI solutions are accessible, scalable, and responsible.

Sarvm AI Collaborates with Microsoft to Bring Indian Languages to Azure

Sarvam AI collaborates with Microsoft to bring its Indic voice large language model (LLM) to Azure

The collaboration aims to enable Sarvam AI to leverage Azure AI and Azure Infrastructure to build and deploy their voice LLM stack

It also aims to enable developers to build generative AI apps at scale and empower enterprises to adopt generative AI quickly and responsibly

Indian generative AI startup Sarvam AI has announced that it is working with Microsoft to make its Indic voice large language model (LLM) available on Azure. The collaboration reinforces Microsoft’s commitment to enabling AI-driven growth and innovation in India.

Sarvam AI is building generative AI models targeting Indic languages and contexts. The startup aims to make the development and deployment of generative AI apps in India more accurate and cost effective.

Sarvam AI’s Indic voice LLM, which intends to provide a natural voice-based interface to LLMs, will initially be available in Hindi. Sarvam AI is working to expand coverage to more Indian languages while ensuring support for colloquial language use.

Pratyush Kumar, co-founder of Sarvam AI, said, “We are very excited to collaborate with Microsoft to make advanced AI technology accessible and impactful for everyone in India. This partnership embodies our vision of ‘Sarvam’ – meaning ‘all’ – by enhancing AI’s reach across various Indian languages and sectors.”

Voice is one of the most natural interfaces for generative AI applications in Indian languages and can be applied in sectors such as education, finance, healthcare, and customer service. By working to make Sarvam AI’s Indic voice LLM available on Azure, Microsoft is laying the foundations for more India-focused developers to build real-time, voice-based generative AI apps at scale.

The companies will also collaborate to help enterprises adopt generative AI quickly and responsibly. Vivek Raghavan, co-founder of Sarvam AI, said, “We see great synergy in combining the deep-tech expertise at Sarvam AI with Microsoft’s leadership in frontier models and the Copilot stack to empower enterprises to be successful in Generative AI”.

Sarvam AI will use Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud and AI infrastructure – including Azure OpenAI Service and Azure Machine Learning – to train, host, and scale its LLMs quickly and efficiently. As part of the collaboration, Sarvam AI and Microsoft are also researching ways to better support Indian languages in Microsoft’s Generative AI frontier language models and to deploy them at scale.

“At Microsoft, we are committed to enabling AI for everyone, empowering India’s transformation into an AI-first nation,” said Puneet Chandok, president of Microsoft India & South Asia. “Through our collaboration with Sarvam AI, we are not just supporting homegrown innovation – we are fostering a future where every individual, regardless of their language or background, can benefit from the power of voice-driven AI solutions. Together, we are taking a significant step toward enabling India’s people, communities, and organizations to achieve more.”

Click here to learn more about Satya Nadella’s visit and how Microsoft is empowering organizations in India with AI.

About Sarvam AI

Sarvam AI is on a mission to lead transformative research in AI to make the development, deployment, and distribution of generative AI applications in India more robust, better performing, and cheaper. The company aims to develop a full stack of generative AI solutions, including efficient large-scale Indic language models and an enterprise-grade platform for building generative AI apps. Sarvam AI is also committed to fostering a generative AI ecosystem through open-source contributions and large-scale data curation for the public good.

Soon Medical and Engg. Education Affordable and in Regional Languages Such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati, Bengali

Government of India, led by PM Narendra Modi, is aiming at making Medical Education affordable and accessible, so that no deserving candidate should face disadvantage because of socio- economic status. Besides, the Medical and Engineering education will also be provided in regional languages of India.

"PM Modi has given a call to provide Medical and Engineering education in regional Indian languages such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati & Bengali", recalled Dr Jitendra Singh, Union Minister for Science & Technology, and who is also a known Diabetologist and Professor of Medicine.

Dr Singh said, "Medical education has commenced in Hindi and soon Engineering studies will also begin in Hindi and translation of Engineering books has commenced in eight languages across the country, and in times to come, students across the nation will be able to pursue Technical and Medical education in their mother tongue. "

In October last year, Home Minister Amit Shah launched India's first MBBS course in Hindi in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. In that launch last year, Mr Shah said that "Medical education is commencing in Hindi and soon Engineering studies will also begin in Hindi and translation of Engineering books has cimmenced in 8 languages ​​across the country, and soon students across the Nation will be able to pursue Technical and Medical education in their Mother Tongue. "

Dr Jitendra Singh, who was addressing an academic meet at Stanley Medical College in Chennai, said, medical education has been one of the top priorities of this government, which can be judged from the statistics that from mere 145 government medical colleges, the number has increased to 260. Under the Central Sector Scheme for setting up of new AIIMS, 22 AIIMS have been approved, while Undergraduate courses have started in 19 AIIMS.

The Minister said that the number of MBBS UG seats have increased from 51,348 in 2014 to 91,927 seats which is an increase of 79%. The number of PG seats have increased by 93% from 31,185 seats in 2014 to 60,202 seats.

Dr Jitendra Singh said that India is being looked up to by the rest of the world in the field of healthcare after the successful handling of the pandemic. Technologically and in human resources, we are much ahead of most other countries, he said.

Thanking PM Modi for bringing ‘Preventive Health Care' into focus in the country for the first time, Dr Jitendra Singh said, under the leadership of PM Modi, in just a span of two years, India could produce two DNA vaccines and one nasal vaccine.

“The whole world recognised India’s leadership role during COVID-19, as it achieved the rare feat of delivering over 220 crore vaccinations through a fully digital platform – COWIN and the process continues,” he said, adding, “India, with 130 crore people, showed the way to the world in its fight against COVID-19 and also helped many countries particularly the neighbours with vaccines.”

The Science & Technology Minister said, during the COVID even the West started looking up to India in search of immunity building techniques drawn from Ayurveda, Homoeopathy, Unani, Yoga, Naturopathy etc.

“Healthcare sector in India is expected to grow to reach a size of $50 billion by 2025, while the global medical tourism market is estimated to be worth about $72 billion. India’s share in medical tourism is expected to be around 10 billion dollars by this year-end. Moreover, the country is the world's largest supplier of generic drugs,” he said.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, it was the farsightedness of PM Modi that soon after coming to power in 2014, he shared the powerful vision of ‘Digital India’ much before COVID-19 hit the world.

Dr Jitendra Singh asserted that Ayushman Bharat is so far the world's best health insurance scheme and credit goes to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for it.

Dr. Jitendra Singh said that New India will become Atmanirbhar in healthcare only by integrating various sciences and domains of medicine.

Local-language Learning App Entri.app Raises $7 Mn in Series a Funding From Omidyar Network India and Others

Mohd Hisam - Founder & CEO

Entri.app, with 8 million+ users, is focused on improving the employability of 40 crore people in the 18-35 age group by empowering them with learning content in their local language

Entri.app, a unique online learning app that empowers aspirants through its local language courses on up-skilling for growth in the private sector and cracking exams for government jobs, has raised $7 million in Series A round of investment led by Omidyar Network India with participation from Boston-based Innospark Ventures and Integrated Capital, a Hong Kong-based private equity. This round of funding follows the company's $3.1 million seed round and brings the total capital raised to $10.1 million.

Leading angel investors Gokul Rajaram, a board member of Pinterest and Coinbase, and Sriram Krishnan, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z), a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, also participated in the round among others. The funds raised in this round will be utilized for content development across existing and new languages, senior-level hirings, and strategic acquisitions that will accelerate Entri’s growth.

Launched in 2017 by Mohammed Hisamuddin and Rahul Ramesh, Entri.app has over 8 million registered users with more than 250K paid subscribers. It offers 500+ courses in eight languages – Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, and Odiya – to help aspirants prepare for different government job exams as well as improve their private job prospects.

Entri Founders

Some of its most popular course categories are Coding, Personal Finance, Spoken English, State PSC Exams, Nursing Certifications, Teacher Exams, and Engineering Technical Exams, among others.

The company offers cohort-based courses called Entri Gold which connects a batch of students with an expert mentor who speaks their local language. The mentor ensures that the batch of aspirants achieve their goal through live interactive classes, analytics, community group activities and personalized guidance. More than 25,000 students have cracked a government job exam with the help of the Entri Gold program.

Entri.app has partnered with diverse content creators (both online and offline) like coaching institutes, educators, and influencers to generate quality content. They have so far signed up 30 influencers in different languages with a combined following of 20 million subscribers for their skilling courses and are targeting to sign up 100 more in 2022. As part of its creator model, Entri.app has also recently acquired the TS Madaan YouTube channel, one of India’s largest skilling YouTube channels with more than 11 million subscribers.

“Entri.app is focused on the non-English speaking segment in India which has over 40 crore people in the age group of 18-35. We feel that with the right kind of training and learning in their mother tongue, they can improve their employability chances and increase earning capabilities. We are focused on this segment and firmly believe we can impact more than 4 crore user’s lives in the next 3 years with the kind of headstart we have got,” says Mohammed Hisamuddin, Founder and CEO of Entri.app.

“Millions of young learners across the country are looking to get skilled so they can get a job either in the private or public sector or become self-employed. These learners need solutions that are contextualized for them, i.e., offering is in the local language, affordable, range of courses they can choose from. Entri.app has made great progress in terms of the variety of courses offered, number of local languages catered to, and the number of students taking up the offering. We are excited to back the team at Entri.app as they march on their mission to become the #1 learning destination for ‘Next Half Billion’ users to improve their employability and earning capabilities,” says Sarvesh Kanodia, Principal, Omidyar Network India.

“I'm excited to support Hisam and the incredible Entri.app team. Unlike other education/learning apps that focus on academics and classes, Entri.app is focused on courses that help build practical, tangible skills and help people find jobs. Their mission is incredibly foundational for India and Indians, and I couldn't be prouder to be involved in their journey,” says Gokul Rajaram, board member at Pinterest and Coinbase.

“The kind of impact Entri has created with more than 8 million users in India has been truly inspiring. Excited to partner with the Entri team at this juncture when they are poised for even more impact and growth across India,” says Venkat Srinivasan, Managing Director at Innospark Ventures.

About Entri.app

Entri.app is a vernacular learning app for Job skills with 8 million registered users and 350k+ new users being added every month. Entri provides different types of content like videos, mock exams, study cards and podcasts in local languages that helps it’s users either crack exams for govt. jobs or up-skill them for private jobs.

Entri co-founded by Mohammed hisamuddin and Rahul Ramesh started with Malayalam content and now has more than 500 courses in 8 different Indian languages. Entri has garnered more than 250k paying users so far.

Omidyar Network India invests in bold entrepreneurs who help create a meaningful life for every Indian, especially the hundreds of millions of Indians in low-income and lower-middle-income populations, ranging from the poorest among us to the existing middle class. To drive empowerment and social impact at scale, we work with entrepreneurs in the private, nonprofit and public sectors, who are tackling India’s hardest and most chronic problems.

We make equity investments in early stage enterprises and provide grants to nonprofits in the areas of Digital Identity, Education, Emerging Tech, Financial Inclusion, Governance and Citizen Engagement, and Property Rights. Omidyar Network India is part of The Omidyar Group, a diverse collection of companies, organizations and initiatives, supported by philanthropists Pam and Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay.

Innospark Ventures is a Boston- based VC investing in founders and ideas that disruptively impact our economy and society

Booking of Website Name in 9 Indian Languages to Open from Mar 16

The government from Monday will open booking of website names in nine Indian scripts including Sanskrit, Kashmiri, Kannada, Oriya, Sindhi and Malayalam.

The autonomous body National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) , under the Ministry of Electronics and IT, has invited applications under the sunrise period starting March 16 to book the entire website name in nine Indian scripts with Bharat as the top level domain which can also be written in the same scripts.

While this facility was already available for languages using Devanagari script, the booking has been opened for eight new languages. The other scripts are Assamese and Santhali in which the entire website name can be booked.

"The sunrise period will begin March 16 and ends on June 15. We will collect applications and check that there are no trademark or copyright issues. The allocation of dispute free domain will begin thereafter. Each domain applied during the sunrise period will have to be booked for a period of 5 years," a NIXI official, who did not wish to be named, told PTI.

The move to start website registration in regional languages is part of international internet body ICANN agenda to facilitate more people access internet by curbing language barrier.

"This makes India a global leader in the internationalized domain name space to have maximum IDNs in different languages. We are getting ready to launch email addresses in all the remaining languages. People with the Datamail app will be able to get email addresses in all 22 Indian languages," Ajay Data, Founder & CEO, Data Ingenious Global said. PTI PRS