Google Bets Big on India’s AI Future with $10M+ Push Across Health, Governance, and Indic Languages
These investments are part of Google and Google DeepMind’s broader strategy to strengthen India’s AI research, deployment, and governance capabilities.
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Google is doubling down on India’s AI ambitions with a fresh wave of funding, research collaborations, and ecosystem partnerships aimed at accelerating the country’s push to build sovereign, inclusive, and impact-driven artificial intelligence.
The company has announced $8 million in funding support for India’s AI Centres of Excellence spanning healthcare, agriculture, education, and sustainable cities, alongside a $400,000 commitment to support the development of India’s Health Foundation Model.
These investments are part of Google and Alphabet’s AI research lab Google DeepMind’s broader strategy to strengthen India’s AI research, deployment, and governance capabilities.
India-focused nonprofit AI institute Wadhwani AI will receive $4.5 million to develop multilingual, AI-powered applications for health and agriculture, reinforcing the role of AI in addressing large-scale public challenges in underserved communities.
At the same time, Google is extending $50,000 grants each to Gnani.AI, BharatGPT developer CoRover.ai, and BharatGen to advance Indic language-focused AI models, a critical gap in India’s digital ecosystem.
“This partnership goes far beyond monetary support. Google DeepMind’s deep research capabilities will significantly strengthen our models, while keeping security at the core as we build robust sovereign and enterprise AI systems,” said Ankush Sabharwal, Founder & CEO of CoRover.ai | BharatGPT.
A key pillar of the announcement is healthcare. Google said it is supporting new collaborations that will leverage MedGemma, its medical AI model, to build India-specific Health Foundation Models aimed at improving efficiency for healthcare providers and delivering better patient outcomes.
As part of this effort, health tech ai startup Ajna Lens will work with experts from AIIMS to develop models tailored for dermatology and OPD triaging, while researchers and clinicians from IISc will explore broader clinical applications of AI. The resulting models will contribute to India’s Digital Public Infrastructure, with outcomes made accessible to the wider ecosystem.
On the governance and public services front, Google DeepMind has funded IndiaAI Mission-backed startup CoRover.ai, the creator of BharatGPT, often described as India’s first large language model.
Built on Gemma’s foundational architecture, CoRover is developing a pre-trained, e-governance-focused language model across English, Hindi, and multiple Indic languages to support use cases across government departments, as well as public and private enterprises.
To further advance inclusive AI, Google also announced a $2 million founding contribution to establish the Indic Language Technologies Research Hub at IIT Bombay, aimed at ensuring global AI advances reflect India’s linguistic diversity.
