India Launches Three Indigenous AI Foundation Models Under IndiaAI Mission

Category	Details
Event	Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) launched three indigenous AI foundation models on 3 November 2026.
Models Launched	EKA-1 (by Soket Labs), Dhīr 2B & Dhīr 5B (by ZenteiQ AiTech).
EKA-1 Details	•26.3 billion parameters, trained on 7.5 trillion tokens. •Supports all 22 scheduled Indian languages + English. •Focus: BFSI, Cybersecurity, Mathematics, Coding, Reasoning, Agentic AI. •Open-source sparse hybrid model.
Dhīr Models Details	•Lightweight, secure, multilingual (English + 10 Indian languages). •Offline/on-premise use in Defense, Government, Industry, Education. •Compatible with GPU/TPU.
Developers	•EKA-1: Soket Labs Technology and Research Private Limited. •Dhīr Models: ZenteiQ AiTech Innovations.
Launch Event	Held in New Delhi, attended by S. Krishnan (MeitY Secretary) and IndiaAI officials.
Initiative	Part of IndiaAI Mission's Innovation Center (Foundation Models) pillar, with subsidized AI computing infrastructure.
IndiaAI Mission	•Approved by Union Cabinet on 7 March 2024. •Budget: ₹10,371.92 crore (5 years). •Aims to boost domestic AI, computing infrastructure, datasets, startups, and responsible AI.
Key Objective	Develop AI systems in Indian languages and enhance local AI capabilities.