Sarvam.AI Secures $41 Million Funding from Lightspeed, Peak XV, and More

Sarvam.AI, a homegrown generative artificial intelligence startup, recently secured $41 million in Series A funding, primarily led by Lightspeed Ventures along with contributions from Peak XV Partners and Khosla Ventures. The company’s focus with this funding revolves around tailoring its offerings specifically for India, particularly in training AI models to support the vast array of Indian languages and prioritizing voice-first interfaces, as stated in a media release on December 7.

Founded in July 2023 by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, previously associated with Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani’s AI4Bharat initiative, Sarvam specializes in a comprehensive Generative AI platform. Their expertise spans from pioneering research in custom AI model training to an enterprise-grade platform for creating and deploying AI solutions.

Wide-Scale Impact

Raghavan, known for his role in developing Digital Public Goods like Aadhaar, expressed Sarvam’s commitment to collaborating with Indian enterprises to develop domain-specific AI models using their data. The startup aims to harness the potential of Gen AI on top of India’s successful infrastructure for public-good applications, aiming for a wide-scale impact.

The article also highlights the significance of Generative AI technology, its relevance in content creation across various mediums, and its adoption by major players like SAP, Salesforce, and IBM. Interestingly, while the West has swiftly adopted this technology, Indian SaaS and tech companies are now increasingly entering the generative AI domain.

Generative AI Startups

Sarvam’s funding comes amidst a wave of investor interest in Generative AI startups in India. Furthermore, the piece emphasizes the burgeoning demand for generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, leading to a notable increase in Gen AI-based SaaS startups in India, which have collectively raised over $590 million in funding by May 2023, according to SaaSBoomi and McKinsey.

Harshjit Sethi, Managing Director at Peak XV, underscored Sarvam’s potential to scale population-level AI applications in India, praising Vivek and Pratyush’s unique blend of expertise in building large-scale systems and domain-specific AI applications. He emphasized the significance of not just creating distinct Indian use cases but also delivering them at affordable prices, positioning Sarvam as ideally poised to achieve this goal.