The Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD) and the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen multilingual access across India’s investment, startup, and industrial ecosystem through the BHASHINI platform, India’s National Language Digital Public Infrastructure.
The collaboration, announced under the “BHASHINI Seva/Sanchalan – A BHASHINI Sahayogi Program,” seeks to enable multilingual governance and service delivery across all 22 languages recognised under the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.
Under the partnership, DPIIT’s digital platforms will progressively integrate BHASHINI’s language technologies, allowing entrepreneurs, startups, investors, businesses, and citizens to access information and services in their preferred languages.
The initiative will include the deployment of BHASHINI Udyat, Mitra, Appmitra, and Pravakta, alongside translation APIs, multilingual glossaries, voice-enabled technologies, linguistic datasets, and domain-specific language models tailored for sectors such as investment promotion, industrial development, entrepreneurship, innovation, and intellectual property.
According to the two organisations, the collaboration aims to reduce language barriers in accessing government information, startup support programmes, industrial services, policy communication, and citizen engagement platforms. The MoU also envisions joint efforts in developing multilingual AI capabilities, strengthening language datasets, conducting awareness programmes, and supporting capacity-building initiatives that encourage wider adoption of language technologies across institutions connected to India’s investment ecosystem.
The partnership further reinforces BHASHINI’s role as a population-scale language infrastructure supporting inclusive digital governance and broader participation in economic growth.
On the occasion of the signing of the MoU, we sought additional insights from Amitabh Nag, CEO, Digital India BHASHINI Division, to understand the broader significance of the collaboration and how multilingual AI and voice-first technologies could reshape access to government services, startup opportunities, and India’s investment ecosystem.
How important is the BHASHINI-DPIIT partnership for improving access to opportunities across India’s linguistic diversity?
India’s economic growth story can become truly inclusive only when every citizen, entrepreneur, startup, innovator, and business is able to participate irrespective of language. While digital platforms have expanded access to services and opportunities, the language divide, digital divide, and literacy divide continue to limit participation for a large section of the population.
The BHASHINI-DPIIT partnership is an important step towards strengthening India’s investment infrastructure, startup ecosystem, and innovation infrastructure through multilingual and voice-first access built on India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). By enabling access to government services, startup support programmes, innovation infrastructure, policy information, industrial initiatives, and investment-related resources in Indian languages, BHASHINI is helping make these opportunities more accessible to citizens across the country.
The significance of this partnership lies in its potential to improve last-mile access and create truly inclusive participation. Whether it is a startup founder in a tier-two city, a small manufacturer, a young innovator leveraging India’s growing startup ecosystem and innovation infrastructure, or a first-generation entrepreneur, access to opportunities should not be determined by language proficiency.
At BHASHINI, our focus is not only on multilingual access but on enabling an end-to-end voice-first journey, allowing citizens to discover information, seek guidance, interact with platforms, and access services naturally in their preferred language. For millions of Indians, voice remains the most intuitive mode of interaction, making technology more accessible, inclusive, and citizen-centric.
The impact of this approach is already visible at scale. BHASHINI today powers 800+ government platforms, processes over 15 million AI inferences every day, has enabled more than 6 billion cumulative inferences, and supports 36 Indian text languages, 23 Indian voice languages, and 35 international languages. Through the BHASHINI-DPIIT partnership, we aim to bring the same scale, inclusivity, and ease of access to India’s startup ecosystem, innovation infrastructure, investment infrastructure, and industry ecosystem, ensuring that language is never a barrier to opportunity.
How could BHASHINI’s technologies transform interactions between startups, entrepreneurs, investors, and government platforms?
Digital platforms are increasingly evolving from information repositories into intelligent systems that can understand, communicate, and assist users in their preferred language. This transformation is being enabled by advances in multilingual AI, voice-first technologies, and domain-specific language models.
As India’s startup ecosystem, investment infrastructure, and innovation infrastructure continue to expand, multilingual and voice-first access will be critical in ensuring that entrepreneurs, innovators, incubators, investors, and enterprises can participate seamlessly across digital platforms.
Through initiatives such as BHASHINI Udyat, Mitra, Appmitra, and Pravakta, BHASHINI is creating the building blocks for a more inclusive digital ecosystem. A key focus area is the development of domain-specific glossaries, specialised linguistic resources, and high-quality datasets that improve contextual understanding in areas such as investment promotion, startups, innovation, entrepreneurship, industry, and intellectual property.
Beyond translation, these technologies will enable a seamless end-to-end voice-first journey across government platforms. Entrepreneurs, startups, innovators, and investors will increasingly be able to ask questions, discover opportunities, understand policies, access services, seek guidance, submit requests, and receive responses through natural voice interactions in their preferred language.
Combined with specialised datasets, contextual AI models, and domain-specific language intelligence, these capabilities will make digital platforms more intuitive, accurate, and accessible, particularly for first-time users and citizens from diverse linguistic backgrounds. This will reduce friction, improve accessibility, and expand participation across India’s diverse Indic language ecosystem.
What role will multilingual AI and voice technologies play in India’s next phase of digital inclusion?
India has demonstrated how Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) can transform service delivery at population scale. A key priority now is to ensure that this infrastructure becomes accessible and usable for every citizen, regardless of language, literacy levels, or digital proficiency.
Multilingual AI and voice-first technologies are central to achieving this objective. For millions of Indians, voice remains the most natural mode of interaction. Enabling citizens to communicate with digital systems in their own language helps bridge the language divide, reduce the literacy divide, and make technology significantly more accessible.
The impact extends far beyond convenience. It creates pathways for broader participation in India’s startup ecosystem, investment infrastructure, innovation infrastructure, and digital economy by enabling citizens to engage with opportunities in the language they are most comfortable using.
These technologies can help citizens access government services, entrepreneurship opportunities, startup support programmes, skilling initiatives, financial services, healthcare, education, agriculture, and other critical resources through intuitive and natural interactions.
BHASHINI’s experience demonstrates that language AI can operate successfully at population scale. With more than 6 billion cumulative inferences processed and millions of multilingual interactions taking place every day across governance, agriculture, education, justice, and citizen services, we are seeing how language technologies can transform access into participation.
The next phase of India’s digital transformation is not simply connecting citizens to platforms, but enabling them to engage confidently and meaningfully in their own language through voice-first and multilingual experiences. As India continues to build digital systems for the population at scale, language AI will play an important role in ensuring that access translates into meaningful participation in economic growth, innovation, entrepreneurship, and nation-building.
What are BHASHINI’s priorities for expanding multilingual digital governance in the years ahead?
BHASHINI’s vision is to make language inclusion a foundational pillar of India’s digital transformation journey. Our priorities include strengthening Indic language AI, expanding support across Indian languages, improving speech and text technologies, enriching linguistic data resources, and enabling seamless integration of multilingual capabilities across public digital platforms.
We are also focused on enabling language technologies that support India’s growing startup ecosystem, investment infrastructure, and innovation infrastructure through domain-specific AI capabilities and multilingual access. This includes developing sector-specific glossaries, specialised datasets, and AI models that can support real-world use cases across governance, healthcare, education, agriculture, commerce, finance, industry, startups, innovation ecosystems, entrepreneurship, and citizen services.
This also includes supporting incubators, accelerators, innovation hubs, startup programmes, intellectual property resources, investor networks, and investment facilitation platforms across languages, making opportunities more accessible to innovators, entrepreneurs, and businesses across the country.
A major area of focus is enabling voice-first governance, where citizens can access information, interact with platforms, and complete service journeys using natural speech in their preferred language. As digital services continue to evolve, ensuring seamless end-to-end multilingual and voice-enabled experiences will be critical for expanding accessibility and adoption.
The BHASHINI-DPIIT partnership demonstrates how language technologies can be embedded within sectoral ecosystems to create tangible outcomes for citizens, startups, innovators, investors, and businesses. It helps extend the benefits of Digital Public Infrastructure to the last mile, strengthen inclusivity, and ensure that innovation is not limited by language.
Ultimately, our goal is to build a future where every citizen can access information, services, and opportunities in the language they understand best, making digital governance truly inclusive, accessible, voice-enabled, and impactful.