Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani has committed a second multi-year grant to AI4Bharat, a language AI project at IIT Madras. The funds aim to expand the group’s work on building open-source tools for Indian languages.

With this, Nilekani has pumped INR 70 Cr into the initiative.

Notably, AI4Bharat creates models for speech recognition, translation, and text-to-speech in Indian languages. Its tools are already used by the government and services like Bhashini, an initiative under the Digital India initiative which offers multilingual digital services in areas like health, governance and finance.

The team’s language models support regional chatbots, voice-based UPI payments and translation of the Supreme Court rulings. Farmers are also using AI4Bharat’s tools for real-time agricultural help via services like Kisan e-Mitra.

This comes on the heels of earlier reports that AI4Bharat was reportedly collecting 10 Tn tokens of language data to build the “next generation of AI services”.

Nilekani first backed AI4Bharat in 2022 through his EkStep Foundation, which helped start the Nilekani Centre at IIT Madras. The Centre has been focused on building AI infrastructure in Indian languages from the ground up.

Notably, AI4Bharat’s data and tools are freely available to startups, researchers, and the government through its site and India’s open AI repository, AIKosha. In the past,

It is pertinent to note that Nilekani has been one of the most active voices pushing for a strong, independent AI ecosystem in India. Beyond funding AI4Bharat, he has consistently argued for building public digital infrastructure that includes language access, data rights, and open innovation.

Via his EkStep Foundation, he has backed projects that focus on education, digital inclusion, and open-source tech. He also played a key role in India’s digital ID system, Aadhaar, and has supported the development of platforms like UPI and DigiLocker.

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