From IIT Bombay to Sarvam AI, Pratyush Kumar’s journey in India’s AI ecosystem

Pratyush Kumar, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence company Sarvam AI, has built his career across academic research, technology and AI education, before turning his focus to developing AI systems for India.

Kumar completed his BTech in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from IIT Bombay in 2009. He subsequently earned a PhD in Computer Engineering from ETH Zurich in 2014.

After completing his doctoral studies, Kumar joined IBM Research as a research scientist in 2015. He later spent two years at Microsoft Research. Between 2018 and 2021, he was a faculty member at IIT Madras and continues to be associated with the institute as an adjunct faculty member.

Kumar has also been involved in efforts to develop AI technologies for Indian languages. He spearheaded AI4Bharat, an initiative focused on building open-source AI technologies for Indian languages.

His work has also extended to AI education. Kumar launched PadhAI, an online learning platform aimed at making AI education more accessible, and co-founded One Fourth Labs in 2019, which works in AI education and consulting.

Co-founding Sarvam AI

Kumar co-founded Sarvam AI with Vivek Raghavan in August 2023. The company says it is developing AI systems and infrastructure designed specifically for India's requirements, with a focus on making AI accessible to a wider population.

Sarvam says its work spans foundational AI components as well as applications for enterprises, governments and developers. The company describes its approach as building and deploying its technology in India while focusing on Indian languages and local use cases.

Kumar has also spoken about the potential of AI in education at AI Summit in February 2026. He discussed the possibility of AI-powered personalised tutoring that could be accessed through smartphones and even feature phones, allowing students to receive assistance in their own languages.

More recently, Kumar has highlighted the importance of making AI affordable to India's large population. At the Global Fintech Fest 2026, he said India's potential advantage could lie in deploying AI cost-effectively at large scale rather than focusing only on building the most powerful models.

Sarvam AI says it has raised $41 million from investors including Lightspeed, Peak XV Partners and Khosla Ventures as it works on scaling its AI infrastructure and models.