This initiative includes the implementation of Indus, a sovereign AI workspace tailored for approximately 2,500 state government users, with an estimated first-year cost of ₹5.63 crore, as stated in a Government Resolution (GR).
A High-Power Committee, led by the chief secretary, has endorsed the proposal.
As per the GR, Sarvam AI will provide sovereign AI solutions entirely hosted on secure, audited infrastructure within India, guaranteeing that no government data is transmitted outside the country. In addition to Indus, the package comprises Samvaad, voice and WhatsApp-based citizen outreach agents, along with Saaras and Bulbul speech models for the state’s MahaAI platform integration.
The Indus platform will offer assistance in drafting and file noting, generate RTI responses, and provide document intelligence, optical character recognition (OCR) for various Indian scripts, multilingual interaction in 22 languages including Marathi, project workspaces, data analysis, and integration with eOffice and NIC email wherever API access is feasible.
The financial setup includes a Foundation Partner subscription fee of ₹1,200 per user per month for the initial year, compared to the usual charge of ₹2,500 per user per month. Additionally, it incorporates a one-time professional services fee of ₹50 lakh, setup and adoption manpower costs of ₹42 lakh over three months, and an annual platform maintenance charge of ₹25 lakh.
The committee has also sanctioned Track Two department transformation engagements starting at ₹50 lakh each, along with on-demand Forward-Deployed Engineers (FDEs) at a cost of ₹7 lakh per engineer per month. It also approved the extension of two FDEs beyond the initial three-month phase until December at the same rate, excluding taxes.
The GR further sanctioned a one-month pilot for the Samvaad AI agent aimed at tuberculosis awareness. This software will make outreach calls to TB patients using local languages and will assess call quality. The pilot includes a one-time agent development fee of ₹6 lakh and a usage cost of ₹3 per minute.
It also permitted the integration of Saaras, a speech recognition model, and Bulbul, a text-to-speech model, into the MahaAI platform for four months on a usage-based, no-commitment basis. The department will incur API usage charges of ₹0.50 per minute for Saaras and ₹30 for every 10,000 characters for Bulbul, excluding GST.
The expenditure will be covered by the Electronics, Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence Department, while the Commissionerate of Electronics, Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence has been given the authority to execute the project following the outlined terms and conditions, as per the GR.
