India’s generative AI leap: Sarvam’s language moat

India’s latest unicorn is not another fintech disruptor or SaaS success story. Sarvam’s rise to a billion-dollar valuation is more than a startup funding milestone. It is the first major test of India’s ambition to build foundational artificial intelligence.

For decades, India has excelled at creating global IT services giants and software companies. In the AI era, however, the challenge is fundamentally different. The question is no longer whether India can deploy technology at scale, but whether it can build the underlying models that power the next generation of digital services.