This is the saga of Mitesh Khapra who crafted a blend of technology, creativity and community well-being. He championed to bridge the gaps in India’s digital connectivity and resolved to customize Artificial Intelligence(AI) for the benefits of Indian community, not just for metropolitan cities and towns but for the hinterlands and grassroots of the nation. His phenomenal work to Indianize Artificial Intelligence, indeed is a milestone in the path of Viksit Bharat.
The exceptional work anchored by Mitesh Khapra, aided to carve him a place in the TIME’s Magazine 2025 AI list and among the 100 most influential people who have championed pioneering and breakthrough work in the domain of Artificial Intelligence. Apparently, Mitesh Khapra didn’t create globally recognized and hailed products. But he created a grassroot revolution and made Artificial Intelligence accessible to the humble and native communities in the hinterlands of India, who are non-English speakers. With his outstanding contribution to the world of Artificial Intelligence, Mitesh Khapra is now one among the global AI leaders such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Open AI Chief Sam Altman, indeed a proud moment for Bharat!
Bestowing AI to grassroot community, brewing digital inclusivity
Mitesh Khapra, an IIT Madras Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, has always urged for revolutionizing global technological tools in an India-friendly way. He has spoken about bridging the gaps and nurturing the state-of-the-art technologies for the benefit of Indian masses. To realize this vision, Mr. Khapra had institutionalized and co-founded AI4Bharat in 2019, a research lab at IIT Madras, which was hub for building indigenous open-source AI datasets, tools and models that suits Indian needs and aligns with Indian languages.
In the process of realizing the ambitious goal, Mr. Khapra and his team collected thousands of hours of speech data from many Indian languages in more than 500 districts across the country. The speech data also ensured to address the cultural, educational and socio-economic diversity of India. The humungous task accomplished by AI4Bharat, now has datasets and speech modules in all the 22 official languages of the country.
AI4Bharat: Foresees an India built on indigenous AI modules
The revolutionary work pioneered by Mitesh Khapra and AI4Bharat has today encompassed every nook and corner of the country and is fostering a futuristic and technically equipped Bharat, built on the indigenous AI models that echoes Indian needs in Indian languages.
AI4Bharat is currently rendering datasets to almost every start-up in India that is working on voice technology. It also supplies datasets for the Bashini project of the Government of India, that aims to transcend language barriers by integrating Artificial Intelligence(AI) to build seamless indigenous communication ecosystem in 22 official languages of India. ‘Bashini’ seeks to create open-source models, tools and services for aiding content translation, speech to text conversion, voice-to-voice in regional languages, thus bridging the digital divide.
In a remarkable illustration, the Supreme Court of India uses the AI models of Mitesh Khapra’s AI4Bharat, in order to translate official documents. Even the farmers across the country have adopted AI4Bharat’s voice bots to report subsidy issues in their local language.
Mitesh Khapra and his visionary AI4Bharat is thus helping to weave a digitally sound, secure, inclusive and literate India from the farmers in the hinterlands of the country to the start-ups in big cities to the helm of power and administration in New Delhi. Mitesh Khapra is also recipient of many prestigious awards and recognitions such as Microsoft Rising Star Award and Google Faculty Research Award.
