Project EKA, spearheaded by AI startup Soket Labs has emerged as India’s ambitious initiative to develop state-of-the-art foundation models that rival global AI systems while being optimised for India’s unique linguistic and socio-economic landscape.
Project EKA seeks to unite AI researchers, engineers, and institutions across the country to develop multilingual, high-efficiency AI models that cater to India’s needs while competing at a global scale.
According to the team behind EKA, the initiative is focused on building an open, ethical, and high-impact AI ecosystem. Experts from premier institutions such as IITs, IISc, and other global research centers are collaborating to create a self-reliant AI infrastructure that spans multiple domains, from education and finance to national security and agriculture.
Broader Impact
Beyond technological advancement, Project EKA aims to democratise AI access. AI-powered education tools could ensure that children across rural and urban areas learn in their native languages. In healthcare, AI-driven diagnostics could improve accessibility and efficiency. Meanwhile, in national security, real-time multilingual intelligence could enhance defense capabilities.
The project is rapidly gaining traction, with an expanding list of contributors from academia, industry, and AI research communities. While still in its early stages, EKA represents a growing movement toward India’s AI sovereignty, signaling a shift from AI dependency to AI leadership.
India AI’s Foundation Model
“I think we need at least $10 million to start working on frontier tech, and this money should be purely dedicated to R&D for building these models—no distractions like building applications or even thinking about GTM. This is where investors and founders need to align with patient capital,” said Abhishek Upperwal, founder and CEO of Soket AI Labs in an earlier interaction with AIM.
India’s push to develop its own AI foundation model gained momentum following DeepSeek’s launch. Upperwal had earlier noted that Pragna-1B, Soket’s 1.25 billion-parameter AI model, is a step toward building frontier models.
Trained on a $100K budget, the plan is to bootstrap larger models using smaller ones and open-source alternatives while keeping compute costs low. He emphasised that high-quality data and training optimisations make this feasible, citing DeepSeek as an example.
However, with only $2-3 million in funding, progress on such models would be slow or deprioritised in favor of revenue-generating products.
