Sarvam Launches Campus Tour to Recruit Indian AI Talent

Sarvam, a Bengaluru-based startup building India's sovereign AI platform, has announced "Sarvam Campus." This initiative is a nationwide university tour designed to bring the company's founders, researchers, and engineers directly to academic institutions. The program will feature technical workshops, live hackathons, and direct product access. Founded by Dr. Vivek Raghavan and Dr. Pratyush Kumar, both alumni of IIT Madras's AI4Bharat, the company timed the launch to coincide with India's Independence Day to emphasize its national mission.

The tour follows Sarvam's recent $1.5 billion valuation, achieved after securing a $300 million Series B funding round. The first tranche of this round closed at $234 million, led by a $150 million investment from HCLTech, alongside participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, and Peak XV Partners. Sarvam operates a full-stack AI platform that includes the Sarvam 30B and Sarvam 105B models, the Bulbul text-to-speech system, the Saaras speech-to-text tool, and Sarvam Vision. These models support 22 Indian languages and currently handle more than 10 million API calls every day.

For AI practitioners and students, this initiative lowers the barrier to entry for developing localized AI. Sarvam is the designated sovereign AI developer under the IndiaAI Mission, holding state-level agreements with Odisha and Tamil Nadu. By bringing its full-stack tools directly to campuses, the company aims to address its immediate hiring needs, looking to fill 63 open roles to expand its current 200-person team. For developers, this means unprecedented access to specialized, multilingual models and a direct path to working on national-scale AI infrastructure.