Indian AI News 1 - Sarvam AI Launches Bulbul V2

Описание: Welcome to Strawberry Signal, a weekly Indian AI news show hosted by Caleb Friesen. This week, Sarvam AI launches Bulbul V2 to rival ElevenLabs, Maya Research open sources the Indic Vault dataset for fine-tuning multilingual models, CognitiveLab’s Nayana project wins Meta’s Llama Impact Grant, Lossfunk opens a new Indiranagar office, and applications open for the AI Launchpad 2025 residency in Dharamshala.

0:00 Sarvam AI Launches Bulbul V2
5:29 Maya Research Open Sources Indic Vault
7:34 Lossfunk Has a New Office
8:01 Nayana Wins Meta Llama Impact Grant
9:05 AI Launchpad 2025
10:01 Why Strawberry Signal?

Sarvam AI Launches Bulbul V2

Sarvam AI has launched Bulbul V2, a text-to-speech model that supports 10 Indian languages plus English. Priced at ₹15 per 10,000 characters, Bulbul V2 is aimed at Indian developers, positioning itself as an affordable alternative to ElevenLabs, which charges approximately ₹85 for the same amount. Bulbul V2 supports voice training, offers low latency (0.398 seconds vs. ElevenLabs’ 1 second), and includes a demo with ₹1,000 free API credits for developers. ElevenLabs currently supports only Hindi and Tamil, while Sarvam AI offers broader language coverage.

Maya Research Open Sources Indic Vault

Maya Research has released Indic Vault, an open-source dataset licensed under MIT. The dataset includes over 80,000 instruction-tuned question-and-answer pairs in Hindi, English, and Telugu, with Marathi and Bengali to be added soon. Indic Vault focuses on informal, everyday Indian language patterns across domains like finance, health, and relationships. Built using synthetic data and 20-shot prompts from large models, Indic Vault is optimized for models from 4B to 27B parameters. Unlike datasets from Krutrim or Sarvam AI, which are used for evaluation, this one is designed specifically for fine-tuning conversational assistants. Maya Research positions Indic Vault as a practical resource for AI startups seeking usable assistant-style data.

Lossfunk Has a New Office

Lossfunk, founded by Paras Chopra, has opened a new office in Indiranagar. The space will host two talks each week, and more details can be found on their Luma page. Lossfunk is also sharing AI tools and insights with the community, including best practices for using Cursor.

Nayana Wins Meta Llama Impact Grant

Meta has awarded a 2024 Llama Impact Grant to Bengaluru-based CognitiveLab for their project Nayana. This multimodal model family includes OCR, a 2B parameter model for edge use, and a 7B reasoning model. Nayana supports 22 languages—10 of which are Indian—and aims to reach 50 globally. CognitiveLab will use the grant to finish pretraining, open-source the OCR model, publish their synthetic data methodology, and partner with educational and governmental institutions.

AI Launchpad 2025

AI Launchpad 2025 is a 9-week free residency for Indian AI developers, taking place in Dharamshala at AltSpace from June 22 to August 31. Open to just 30 participants, the program includes accommodation, cloud compute, and LLM credits, enabling builders to focus on shipping AI products. Applications close May 15. This is an ideal opportunity for Indian AI founders to accelerate their projects in a collaborative, offline environment.

Why Strawberry Signal?

Strawberry Signal is a new weekly news show focused on Indian AI. The name references Sony Signal in Bengaluru and the AI community’s connection to the word “strawberry.” Caleb Friesen, creator of Backstage with Millionaires, launched this show to fill the gap in Indian AI media coverage. Just as Indian startup news lacked coverage in 2019, Indian AI today suffers from underrepresentation. With funding on the rise and the AI space still in its infancy, Strawberry Signal aims to spotlight builders who are choosing to stay in India and build here—despite the pull of San Francisco. Strawberry Signal is a place for high-agency Indian AI developers to stay informed and stay rooted.