Board brings together leaders from finance, technology, academia, public policy and defence as BharatGen prepares to scale its homegrown multilingual AI models across key sectors.
BharatGen, the government-backed initiative developing sovereign artificial intelligence models for India, has constituted an eight-member advisory board to guide its technology strategy, adoption roadmap and governance as it expands deployment across industries.
The board brings together senior leaders with experience spanning financial markets, banking, technology, academia, public policy and the armed forces. Its members, who will serve in their individual capacities, include Ashish Chauhan, MD and CEO of the National Stock Exchange; Debjani Ghosh, Distinguished Fellow at NITI Aayog and Chief Architect of the NITI Frontier Tech Hub; and Dipak Gupta, former MD and CEO of Kotak Mahindra Bank and Professor of Practice at IIT Bombay.
The other members are Dr. Girija Narlikar, Director of Engineering at Google Workspace; Dr. Jaynarayan H. Lala, former Senior Principal Technical Fellow at Raytheon, an RTX business; Kiran Deshpande, former CEO of Tech Mahindra and Co-founder of Mojo Networks; Lt Gen Rakesh Kapoor (Retd.), former Deputy Chief of Army Staff; and Vice Admiral Raman Puri (Retd.), former Deputy Chief of Naval Staff and Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command.
“Building sovereign AI requires more than strong models. It requires an understanding of how technology will work within India’s institutions, businesses and public systems.”
— Rishi Bal, CEO, BharatGen
The appointments come as BharatGen moves beyond foundational model development towards wider real-world adoption. The company is building multilingual AI capabilities from scratch for Indian requirements, with a portfolio spanning text, speech and vision.
Its offerings include Param2, a text model supporting 22 Indian languages and English; Shrutam2 for speech-to-text; Sooktam2 for text-to-speech; and Patram, a vision-language model designed to understand Indian documents and formats.
BharatGen is targeting sectors where language diversity, data control, affordability and customisation are critical, including governance, financial services, education, healthcare and cultural preservation.
CEO Rishi Bal said the board’s cross-sector experience would help BharatGen understand how sovereign AI can operate within India’s institutions, businesses and public systems. He noted that the initiative’s next phase would focus on translating foundational model development into practical deployments.
Ashish Chauhan said India’s experience in building technology for financial markets and payments at scale demonstrated the potential of solutions designed for Indian conditions. He described BharatGen’s work as an ambitious effort to bring a similar approach to AI.
The advisory board’s formation signals BharatGen’s focus on combining indigenous AI development with institutional expertise and governance. As India looks to reduce dependence on external AI platforms, the initiative’s ability to deliver reliable, scalable and locally relevant models will be central to its long-term significance.