The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) will soon be announcing the first batch of approved project proposals under the India AI mission, according to sources with knowledge about the approval process for the AI proposals.

The sources said the announcement will be made in a week or so.

Under the IndiaAI Mission, MeitY launched a Call for Proposals for startups, researchers, and entrepreneurs to collaborate on building homegrown foundational AI models on January 30, 2025. By the initial submission date of February 15, the government had received 67 proposals in the first round. The ministry was expected to make an announcement within a month’s time of the initial submission.

Of the 67 proposals, 22 projects focus on Large Language Models (LLMs) and Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) for sectors like healthcare, etc. The remaining 45 are centered on domain-specific models (SLMs). In March, the government will receive the third round of applications for the AI mission.

Speaking at the Global Adda event at Jio Centre, Abhishek Singh, Additional Secretary at MeitY, said the government received almost 200 applications for building Indian LLMs with almost 67 applications in the first round and 120 applications in the second round.

“There is a huge appetite for our researchers and the startup community to be able to build these solutions,” he said.

Published on March 20, 2025