The story, potential & push for Indic data

Why India needs its own language model

 What is your biggest bottleneck right now? 

Does big tech’s data edge hurt smaller AI?

Is translation enough for Indic language use?

Govt role in curating Indic language datasets

Govt to open Prasar Bharati dataset for AI

Market potential of Indic data for AI

Can Indic AI be frugal yet powerful?

Conclusion

Credits

A quiet race is on to give India its own AI voice. From call-centre automation to defence and legal systems, Abhishek Upperwal of Soket Labs and journalist Swathi Radhakrishnan tell us why AI trained only on Western, English-heavy data cannot meet India’s needs. Translation isn’t enough; models must “think” in Hindi, Tamil or Marathi to capture nuance and reduce bias. The government’s IndiaAI mission, with nearly ₹10,000 crore in funding, is catalysing startups to build these Indic models. But their biggest bottleneck is data. Only a sliver of the world’s open datasets are in Indian languages, and even public archives like Doordarshan take time to unlock. Startups are scrambling crowdsourcing voices, licensing publishing-house content, generating synthetic text and negotiating with ministries to reach the 15–20 trillion high-quality tokens needed for a world-class foundation model. In this episode Host Anirban Chowdhury, ET’s Swathi Moorthy and Soket AI’s, founder, Abhishek Upperwal try to answer the following questions:
What makes sovereign, Indic-first AI critical for India’s economy and security?
How are innovators overcoming the huge shortage of quality language data?
Can low-cost, DeepSeek-style methods help India build frugal yet powerful models?
Where will the commercial payoffs voice AI, regional apps, enterprise tools arrive first? 

Tune in.

You can follow Anirban Chowdhury on his social media: Twitter and Linkedin

You can follow Swathi Moorthy on her social media: Twitter and LinkedIn and also read Newspaper Article

Listen to Corner Office Conversation our new show:: Corner Office Conversation with Pawan Goenka, Chairman, IN-SPACe, Corner Office Conversation with The New Leaders of Indian Pharma and much more.

Check out other interesting episodes from the host like: Why Is India Still Buying Russian Oil?, How AI is Rewriting Cinema Part 2, Trump vs Harvard: India Impact, Of Dragons and Elephants: Modi–Xi in Focus and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on ET Play, The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

 

A quiet race is on to give India its own AI voice. From call-centre automation to defence and legal systems, Abhishek Upperwal of Soket Labs and journalist Swathi Radhakrishnan tell us why AI trained only on Western, English-heavy data cannot meet India&rsquo;s needs. Translation isn&rsquo;t enough; models must &ldquo;think&rdquo; in Hindi, Tamil or Marathi to capture nuance and reduce bias. The government&rsquo;s IndiaAI mission, with nearly ₹10,000 crore in funding, is catalysing startups to build these Indic models. But their biggest bottleneck is data. Only a sliver of the world&rsquo;s open datasets are in Indian languages, and even public archives like Doordarshan take time to unlock. Startups are scrambling crowdsourcing voices, licensing publishing-house content, generating synthetic text and negotiating with ministries to reach the 15&ndash;20 trillion high-quality tokens needed for a world-class foundation model. In this episode Host Anirban Chowdhury, ET&rsquo;s Swathi Moorthy and Soket AI&rsquo;s, founder, Abhishek Upperwal try to answer the following questions:
<ol>
<li aria-level="1">What makes sovereign, Indic-first AI critical for India&rsquo;s economy and security?</li>
<li aria-level="1">How are innovators overcoming the huge shortage of quality language data?</li>
<li aria-level="1">Can low-cost, DeepSeek-style methods help India build frugal yet powerful models?</li>
<li aria-level="1">Where will the commercial payoffs voice AI, regional apps, enterprise tools arrive first?&nbsp;</li>
</ol>
Tune in. You can follow Anirban Chowdhury on his social media: <a href="https://twitter.com/AnirbanET">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/anirban-chowdhury-b5067219/">Linkedin</a> You can follow Swathi Moorthy on her social media: <a href="https://x.com/kpswathi">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/swathi-moorthy-1a628115/">LinkedIn</a> and also read <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/etreporter/author-swathi-moorthy-479257817.cms?from=mdr">Newspaper Article</a> Listen to Corner Office Conversation our new show:: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/corner-office-conversation/id1827451035?i=1000718205446">Corner Office Conversation with Pawan Goenka, Chairman, IN-SPACe</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/corner-office-conversation/id1827451035?i=1000720534576">Corner Office Conversation with The New Leaders of Indian Pharma</a> and <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/corner-office-conversation/id1827451035">much more</a>.
Check out other interesting episodes from the host like: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/the-morning-brief/id1568661777?i=1000725625786">Why Is India Still Buying Russian Oil?</a>,<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/the-morning-brief/id1568661777?i=1000723806634"> How AI is Rewriting Cinema Part 2</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/the-morning-brief/id1568661777?i=1000710947447">Trump vs Harvard: India Impact</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/the-morning-brief/id1568661777?i=1000724471517">Of Dragons and Elephants: Modi&ndash;Xi in Focus</a> and <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/the-morning-brief/id1568661777">much more</a>.
Catch the latest episode of &lsquo;The Morning Brief&rsquo; on <a href="https://www.etplay.com/etplay">ET Play</a>, <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/podcast?from=mdr">The Economic Times Online</a>,<a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6PL5kfPbwURBEu6fHCVTOL?si=26ec0fbfa7134fea"> Spotify</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/the-morning-brief/id1568661777">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://www.jiosaavn.com/shows/the-morning-brief/1/GNPiFQD2xpY_">JioSaavn</a>, <a href="https://music.amazon.in/podcasts/f378141f-9afb-495d-83da-9b08ec5047ac/the-morning-brief">Amazon Music</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@theetpodcasts">Youtube</a>.
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To make sense of the week’s hottest stories in business, economy, politics and markets, journalists from the Economic Times chat with reporters and industry leaders in this thrice-weekly (Tuesday, Thursday, Friday) podcast.

The Morning Brief

India's Big Indic Data Chase