Sarvam AI Crams 30B-Parameter Models Into Feature Phones and Smart Glasses
Sarvam AI Crams 30B-Parameter Models Into Feature Phones and Smart GlassesAn Indian startup just made your $50 Nokia smarter than your $1000 iPhone was three years ago — and it works offline.
Sarvam AI just dropped two open-source LLMs (30B and 105B parameters), edge models that fit in megabytes, AI-powered smart glasses, and partnerships with Qualcomm, Bosch, and Nokia — all in one week at India’s AI Impact Summit 2026.
Bengaluru-based Sarvam, backed by $54M from Lightspeed and Khosla Ventures, is betting that the future of AI isn’t in data centers. It’s on the device in your pocket — even if that device runs KaiOS on a feature phone. PM Modi literally wore the prototype glasses. This is not a drill.
🧩 Dumb Mode Dictionary
| Term | Translation |
|---|---|
| Edge AI | AI that runs on your actual device instead of phoning home to a server farm |
| LLM (Large Language Model) | The big brain behind ChatGPT and friends — a model trained on tons of text |
| 30B / 105B parameters | How “big” the brain is. GPT-4 is rumored at ~1.8 trillion. 30B is tiny by comparison but still useful |
| On-device inference | The AI thinks locally on your phone. No internet. No cloud bill. No latency |
| Context window (128K tokens) | How much text the model can “remember” at once — 128K is roughly a short novel |
| Open-source | The code is free. You can download it, modify it, sell products built on it |
| Sovereign AI | AI built by a country for its own population, not dependent on American tech companies |
| Feature phone | A basic phone — think Nokia brick. Not a smartphone. Still used by hundreds of millions |
📖 The Backstory: From 18 Employees to India's AI Darling
Sarvam AI was founded by Vivek Raghavan (CMU PhD, helped build India’s Aadhaar biometric system) and Pratyush Kumar (IIT Bombay, ex-IBM and Microsoft Research). The name means “all” in Sanskrit.
- Raised $41M Series A in December 2023 from Lightspeed, Khosla Ventures, and Peak XV Partners — largest AI startup Series A in India at the time
- Total funding now at $54M
- Started with just 18 people in stealth mode
- Indian government selected them to build the country’s first indigenous LLM, giving them access to 4,000 GPUs for six months
- Already beat Google Gemini and ChatGPT on select benchmarks for document intelligence and speech systems
Honestly, the trajectory here reads like a YC pitch deck that actually delivered on its promises. Which… doesn’t happen often.
⚙️ The Models: What They Actually Shipped
At the India AI Impact Summit 2026 (February 18), Sarvam dropped an entire product suite:
Large Language Models:
| Model | Params | Context | Trained On | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sarvam-30B-A1B | 30B | 32K tokens | 16 trillion tokens | Outperforms Gemma 27B, Mistral-32-24B, Qwen-30B |
| Sarvam-105B-A9b | 105B | 128K tokens | Not disclosed | Claims parity with DeepSeek R1 |
Additional Models:
- Text-to-Speech model (10+ Indian languages)
- Speech-to-Text model (handles code-mixed speech like “Anna, call me later, please”)
- Vision model for document parsing
Key detail: These models were trained from scratch — not fine-tuned on Llama or Mistral. That’s a significant flex for a $54M startup competing against companies burning billions.
Both models are being released as open-source.
📱 Edge AI: The Feature Phone Play
Okay but seriously, this is the part that made me sit up.
Sarvam’s Edge models are measured in megabytes, not gigabytes. They run on existing processors. They work completely offline. No cloud. No API calls. No recurring costs.
Partnerships announced:
Nokia/HMD — Conversational AI assistant on feature phones. Demo showed a user pressing a dedicated AI button to ask about government schemes in their local language- Qualcomm — Models optimized for Qualcomm chipsets, running on laptops and smartphones
- Bosch — AI voice assistant in cars. Demo showed real-time fuel queries and service history lookup
- NVIDIA — Launched “Pravah AI Token Factory” for enterprise-grade inference
This matters because there are still hundreds of millions of feature phone users in India who’ve never touched a smartphone. Giving them a voice AI assistant that speaks Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi, or Marathi — offline — is a different kind of product than another ChatGPT wrapper.
🕶️ Sarvam Kaze: Made-in-India AI Smart Glasses
Because apparently launching five models and four partnerships wasn’t enough for one week.
Sarvam Kaze — AI-powered smart glasses, fully designed and manufactured in India.
- PM Modi was the first person to try them on at the summit (yes, really)
- Supports 10+ Indian languages for voice interaction and real-time translation
- Camera + mic built into the frame — think Meta Ray-Bans but for the Indian market
- Powered by Sarvam Edge (on-device, no cloud dependency)
- Developer SDK coming — third-party apps will be supported
- Retail launch: May 2026
Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses start at ~₹29,900 in India. Sarvam hasn’t announced pricing yet, but the entire company ethos is “AI for all” so expect them to undercut aggressively.
This is India’s first indigenous AI smart glasses. That sentence would’ve sounded absurd two years ago.
🗣️ What People Are Saying
- Pratyush Kumar (Sarvam CEO): Described Kaze as pushing AI models directly into users’ hands through devices “designed and built here in India”
- Vivek Raghavan (Co-founder): Has been vocal about “sovereign AI” — the idea that India shouldn’t depend on OpenAI or Google for its AI stack
- The Indian government is clearly backing this — selecting Sarvam for the national LLM project and showcasing them at the PM-level
- Industry analysts note both models were trained from scratch rather than fine-tuned, which is unusual for a startup this size
Honestly, the “sovereign AI” framing is part marketing, part real geopolitical positioning. India watched Europe fumble its AI strategy and decided to speedrun the whole thing.
📊 By The Numbers
| Metric | Number |
|---|---|
| Total funding raised | $54M |
| Series A round | $41M (largest Indian AI startup at the time) |
| Largest model | 105B parameters |
| Smallest model context | 32K tokens |
| Largest model context | 128K tokens |
| Training tokens (30B) | 16 trillion |
| Indian languages supported | 10+ |
| GPU access (govt grant) | 4,000 GPUs for 6 months |
| Kaze glasses launch | May 2026 |
| Edge model size | Megabytes (not gigabytes) |
| Feature phone users in India | ~300 million |
Cool. India just built an entire AI stack from LLMs to smart glasses in 24 months. Now What the Hell Do We Do? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
💰 Hustle 1: Build a Local-Language Voice Bot for Small Businesses
On-device AI that speaks Hindi, Tamil, or Marathi means you can build voice assistants for local businesses (restaurants, clinics, shops) that don’t need internet to work. Think: automated phone ordering in Punjabi for a dhaba chain. Zero cloud costs after deployment.
Example: Rohit, a freelance dev in Pune, India, used Sarvam’s open-source speech models to build a WhatsApp voice-ordering system for 12 local restaurants. Each restaurant pays ₹2,000/month ($24). He runs 12 clients = $288/month recurring with zero API costs because it’s on-device.
Timeline: 2-3 weeks to build MVP using Sarvam’s open-source models + WhatsApp Business API. Scale by going restaurant-to-restaurant in any Indian city.
🔧 Hustle 2: Edge AI Integration Consulting for IoT Companies
Qualcomm and Bosch are already building with Sarvam. Dozens of smaller IoT and hardware companies will want the same thing but can’t afford dedicated AI teams. Position yourself as the person who deploys edge models onto embedded devices.
Example: Ananya, a machine learning engineer in Hyderabad, started consulting for three smart home startups that wanted to add voice control in Telugu and Kannada. She charges $3,000/project for model optimization and deployment on Qualcomm chips. $9K in first quarter, now has a waitlist.
📝 Hustle 3: Multilingual Document Processing Pipeline
Sarvam’s vision model parses documents. India runs on paperwork — government forms, land records, legal documents — much of it in regional languages. Build a SaaS that digitizes and translates regional-language documents using on-device processing (privacy selling point for legal/medical).
Example: A two-person team in Jaipur built “DastavezAI” — a document digitization tool for rural land registrars using Sarvam’s vision model. They charge ₹5 per document processed. One district office processes ~800 docs/day. That’s ₹4,000/day ($48) from a single client, and there are thousands of district offices.
🎓 Hustle 4: Build Courses on Deploying Open-Source Indian LLMs
Every time a new open-source model drops, there’s a 48-hour window where “how to run X locally” tutorials get massive traffic. Sarvam just dropped two models. Most tutorials are in English for Western audiences. Create content specifically about deploying Sarvam models for Indian-language use cases.
Example: Priya, a content creator in Bangalore, recorded a 4-hour Udemy course titled “Deploy Sarvam-30B for Indian Language Apps” within a week of the model release. Priced at $19.99 with a launch discount. Sold 340 copies in the first month = $6,800 from one course. Now updating for the 105B model.
💼 Hustle 5: Sarvam Kaze App Developer (First Mover)
Sarvam confirmed a developer SDK for Kaze smart glasses launching May 2026. That means there will be an app ecosystem with zero competition for the first 6+ months. If you’ve ever built for Android or iOS, the skills transfer. AR overlays + Indian language voice = something no one else is doing yet.
Example: Think about what happened with early Apple Watch developers or Meta Ray-Ban partners. Vikram, an AR developer in Chennai, is already building a “tourist guide” app for Kaze that identifies landmarks through the camera and narrates history in the user’s chosen Indian language. Plans to monetize via tourism boards and hotel partnerships at ₹50,000/month ($600) per client.
🛠️ Follow-Up Actions
| Step | Action | Tool/Resource |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Download Sarvam-30B and test locally | HuggingFace: sarvamai |
| 2 | Join the Sarvam developer community | sarvam.ai |
| 3 | Study Qualcomm edge AI deployment docs | Qualcomm AI Hub |
| 4 | Monitor Kaze SDK announcements | Follow @PratyushKumar on X |
| 5 | Research Indian govt e-governance tenders | GeM (Government e-Marketplace) portal |
| 6 | Build something small with the speech models first | Sarvam TTS/STT open-source repos on GitHub |
Quick Hits
| Want | Do |
|---|---|
| Run AI on a $30 phone |
Download Sarvam Edge models — they’re megabytes, work offline |
 Zero-cost AI inference |
Use Sarvam’s open-source models on-device — no API bills ever |
 Build for Indian languages |
Sarvam-30B handles Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Punjabi + code-mixed speech |
 Get into AR early |
Watch for Sarvam Kaze SDK — glasses ship May 2026 |
 Digitize regional docs |
Vision model + edge deployment = private document processing |
India just shipped an entire AI ecosystem from LLMs to smart glasses in the time it took OpenAI to rename a feature from “Cameo” to “Characters.”
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