India's AI platform — voice and text APIs for Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, and 8 more Indian languages
Sarvam AI is the most important Indian AI company building language infrastructure for Bharat — the 800 million+ Indians who are more comfortable in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Kannada, Gujarati, Marathi, Malayalam, Odia, or Punjabi than in English. Founded in 2023 in Bengaluru by IIT Madras alumni Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, Sarvam builds and provides models specifically trained on Indian languages, not general multilingual models with Indian languages as an afterthought. For Indian product teams building for Tier 2 and Tier 3 users — particularly in fintech, agritech, healthtech, and government services — Sarvam's APIs for speech-to-text, text-to-speech, translation, and Indian-language LLM are the foundation for genuinely inclusive Indian products. OpenAI and Google have Indian language support; Sarvam has Indian language expertise.
Sarvam AI is an Indian AI startup founded in 2023 and headquartered in Bengaluru. It builds and operates large language models, speech models, and translation models specifically optimised for Indian languages. The company received backing from the Indian government's IndiaAI Mission and has positioned itself as India's sovereign AI infrastructure play — models that understand Indian languages natively, trained on Indian data, hosted on Indian servers, with pricing in INR.
Sarvam's API suite covers four core capabilities: speech-to-text (transcribe spoken Indian language audio to text), text-to-speech (convert text to natural-sounding speech in Indian languages and accents), translation (translate between Indian languages and English), and Saaras — their Indian-language LLM for chat and reasoning in Hindi and other Indian languages. All APIs are available via REST, with SDKs for Python and Node.js.
The context that makes Sarvam strategically important for Indian product builders: India has 1.4 billion people, approximately 125 million of whom are English-proficient. The remaining 1.2+ billion people are served by products built overwhelmingly in English, with at best Google Translate-quality language support. Sarvam's bet is that building truly excellent Indian language AI — not translated English AI — unlocks the next phase of Indian tech's growth into Bharat. For Indian fintech, healthtech, agritech, and insurance teams targeting rural and semi-urban India, Sarvam's APIs are the infrastructure that makes multilingual product experiences possible at quality levels that actually work for real users.
Transcribe spoken Indian language audio to text — works on phone call recordings, voice notes, voice input in apps. Handles code-switching (Hinglish, Tanglish) and accented speech that global models struggle with. Use case: voice-based KYC where users narrate their details in Hindi, automated transcription of customer support calls in regional languages, voice search in Indian languages for discovery apps.
Convert text to natural-sounding spoken audio in Indian languages and accents — not robotic TTS but voices that sound like real Indian speakers. Multiple voice options per language. Use cases: IVR systems for rural users, voice notifications for fintech transaction confirmations ("Aapka Rs 5,000 ka transaction successful hua"), audio summaries of policy documents for insurance or government services, accessibility features for low-literacy users.
Translate between Indian languages and English with domain-specific accuracy — understands financial, medical, and legal terminology in Indian language context rather than literal word-for-word translation. Use cases: translate English-language terms and conditions into Hindi for BNPL products, translate support tickets from regional languages to English for agent handling, translate product descriptions for multi-language e-commerce.
A reasoning and chat model that operates natively in Indian languages — not translation of an English response but reasoning conducted in Hindi or other Indian languages. Use cases: Hindi-language customer support chatbot that understands context and nuance, agricultural advisory chatbot in regional languages for kisan apps, insurance claim guidance in the user's native language without English intermediary translation steps.
| Factor | Sarvam AI | OpenAI (Whisper / GPT) | Google (Translate / Gemini) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indian language accuracy | Best — purpose-built | Good on major languages | Good — strong index |
| Code-switching (Hinglish) | Native support | Partial | Partial |
| Indian accent STT | Trained on Indian speech | Good but generic | Good |
| INR pricing | Yes | USD only | USD only |
| Data hosted in India | Yes | US servers | US servers (by default) |
| English LLM quality | Limited | Best | Very good |
| Ecosystem / tooling | Growing | Largest | Large |
| Best for | Indian language voice + text products | English-first products | Google Workspace + search |
Sarvam offers API access with INR pricing — a meaningful advantage over OpenAI and Google's USD-denominated APIs with 18% GST reverse charge for Indian companies.
Limited API calls per month across all Sarvam APIs — sufficient for development and prototyping. Test speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and translation without a credit card. Most Indian teams building a proof-of-concept for a Hindi-language feature start on the free tier and evaluate quality before committing to production usage.
Consumption-based pricing in INR for all APIs — STT charged per audio minute, TTS per character, translation per character, LLM per token. Specific rates available on Sarvam's pricing page. For Indian teams doing budget comparisons: Sarvam's INR pricing with no GST reverse charge complexity typically comes out 20-30% cheaper in total cost than equivalent OpenAI Whisper + GPT-4o for Indian language tasks, with better accuracy on regional languages.
Dedicated capacity, SLAs, custom model fine-tuning for your domain (medical, financial, agricultural terminology), and on-premises or private cloud deployment options. For large Indian enterprises — banks, insurance companies, government agencies — requiring data sovereignty and custom language models for specialised domains.
Whisper STT and GPT-4o handle major Indian languages reasonably well. Better for English-first products with occasional Indian language needs. USD pricing and US data hosting. Choose for English + Hindi; choose Sarvam for 10+ Indian languages at higher accuracy.
Google's STT, TTS, and Translation APIs with strong Indian language coverage backed by Google's index. Better ecosystem and documentation than Sarvam currently. Choose Google for enterprise-grade SLAs; Sarvam for Indian language accuracy and INR pricing.
Claude handles Hindi and major Indian languages well for text tasks. Better English quality than Sarvam. Not a voice/STT/TTS platform. Use Claude for reasoning and writing in Indian languages; Sarvam for voice and specialised Indian language accuracy.
We help Indian product teams design multilingual experiences — from selecting the right language APIs to instrumenting Indian language feature adoption for Tier 2 and Tier 3 users.
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