Sarvam Startup Program - 6-12 months of API credits
Source: https://www.sarvam.ai/startup-program
Description
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+ 1 Sarvam AI (India's full-stack sovereign AI platform, valued at ~$1.5B) launched the Sarvam Startup Program on March 5, 2026 to back early-stage AI builders in India. Selected startups get 6-12 months of API credits (sized to their projected usage) across Sarvam's full API stack — Speech-to-Text, Text-to-Speech, Translation, Chat Completion, and Document Intelligence — with native code-mixing support across 22 Indian languages + English. Plus direct access to Sarvam's engineering team and co-branded launch amplification.
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+ 3 Bottom line for vibe coders / founders: If you're an Indian early-stage AI startup that needs Indic-language voice/text APIs, this is the cheapest way to ship. If you just want to evaluate the APIs without applying, skip the program and grab the ₹1,000 free credit every new Sarvam dev account gets (Entry 26) — instant, no application.
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+ 9 Good fit if:
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+ 10 • You're building a consumer/enterprise AI product targeting Indian users (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, etc.)
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+ 11 • Your use case is voice agents, multilingual chatbots, transcription, translation, or document AI for the Indian market
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+ 12 • You're at Development / Beta / Production stage (the form asks where you are)
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+ 13 • You have a registered company and a website to show
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+ 14
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+ 15 Not a fit if:
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+ 16 • You're outside India and don't serve Indian-language users (the program is positioned for India's developer ecosystem)
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+ 17 • You only need English-only LLM calls — OpenRouter / Groq / Cerebras free tiers will be cheaper and instant
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+ 18 • You're a hobby project with no company entity (apply for the ₹1,000 dev credit instead)
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+ 24 1. Go to sarvam.ai/startup-program
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+ 25 2. Scroll to the application form (3-step wizard)
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+ 26 3. Step 1 - Startup info: company name, website, business email, short product description, stage (Development / Beta / Production), funding raised, industry, team size, country/city, founder names
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+ 27 4. Step 2 - API interests & usage: select which Sarvam APIs you plan to use (STT / TTS / Translation / Chat / Document AI) and provide expected request volumes for Year 1 and Year 2
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+ 28 5. Step 3 - Context: referral source (how you heard about it) and any additional notes you want the team to see
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+ 29 6. Submit and wait for the Sarvam team to review
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+ 30 7. If selected, you'll be onboarded with a credit allocation matched to the usage projections you submitted
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+ 31
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+ 32 Important caveats:
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+ 33 • Sarvam does not publicly publish a credit dollar value — it's discretionary, sized to your declared scale (small startup = small allocation, larger usage projection = larger allocation)
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+ 34 • No rollover: unused credits do not carry over after the 6-12 month program window ends
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+ 35 • No public deadline: applications are rolling — no announced cohort cutoff
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+ 36 • The program is heavily oriented toward India-focused use cases; non-India applicants likely won't be prioritized
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+ 42 All APIs are OpenAI-compatible / REST-based. Models below reflect Sarvam's current production catalog.
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+ 43
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+ 45 • Saarika v2.5 — multilingual STT covering 22 Indian languages + English with code-mixing
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+ 46 • Saarika real-time — streaming STT for voice agents and live captioning
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+ 47
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+ 49 • Bulbul v2 — neural TTS with native voices across 11+ Indian languages
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+ 50 • Voice agent / conversational TTS endpoints (low-latency)
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+ 51
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+ 53 • Mayura — Indian language translation (Indic <-> English, Indic <-> Indic) with formal/colloquial/code-mixed modes
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+ 54
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+ 56 • Sarvam-M — open-weight 24B-parameter Indic LLM (production)
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+ 57 • Sarvam 2B — smaller fast model for cost-sensitive workloads
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+ 58
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+ 60 • Extraction, classification, parsing endpoints for forms, invoices, receipts (Indic + English)
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+ 61
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+ 62 For the latest model list and pricing, check sarvam.ai/api-pricing — Sarvam ships new models quickly, so the catalog can change.
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+ 68 Before opening the form, have these ready (saves you re-typing):
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+ 69
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+ 70 FieldWhat they want
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+ 71 Product description2-3 sentence pitch — what you build, who uses it
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+ 72 StageDevelopment / Beta / Production (be honest, they verify)
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+ 73 FundingBootstrapped / Pre-seed / Seed / Series A+ amount
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+ 74 Team sizeHeadcount (founders + employees)
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+ 75 LocationCountry + city of operations
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+ 76 API selectionWhich Sarvam APIs you need (STT, TTS, Translation, Chat, Doc AI)
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+ 77 Year 1 usageEstimated monthly call volume per API for first 12 months
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+ 78 Year 2 usageSame, for months 13-24 (helps them size the credit grant)
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+ 79 Referral sourceWhere you heard about Sarvam (VC, accelerator, news, friend)
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+ 80
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+ 81 Tip: Pad your usage projections realistically — under-projecting gets you a tiny credit allocation, wildly over-projecting raises eyebrows. Think "what we'd actually use if we hit our 12-month roadmap."
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+ 86
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+ 87 • 6-12 months of API credits sized to your projected scale (no public dollar floor/ceiling)
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+ 88 • Direct access to Sarvam's engineering team — preferential support channel, not the public Discord
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+ 89 • Production-grade infrastructure — same SLA as paying enterprise customers
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+ 90 • Multilingual coverage — 22 Indian languages with code-mixing support out of the box
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+ 91 • Co-branded case study — opportunity for Sarvam to publish your launch story
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+ 92 • Launch amplification — Sarvam can promote your product after you go live
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+ 98 If you're not ready to apply or don't qualify, every new Sarvam developer account gets:
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+ 99
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+ 100 • ₹1,000 free credits usable across all Sarvam APIs
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+ 101 • ₹100 no-credit-card starter trial — try before adding any payment method
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+ 102 • Self-serve via sarvam.ai/api-pricing — instant, no review queue
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+ 103
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+ 104 This is the fastest way to actually evaluate the models. Once you've validated the use case, then apply for the Startup Program with real usage data.
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+ 107
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+ 109
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+ 110 • No public deadline — rolling applications, but don't expect same-week turnaround
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+ 111 • Sovereign AI angle — Sarvam emphasizes India-built, India-data-residency. If you have Indian government / enterprise clients with data localization requirements, mention it in the application
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+ 112 • Compare with IndiaAI Mission (Entry 53) — government program with subsidized GPU compute and capital, but very different process and longer timelines
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+ 113 • Stack with other Indian programs — nothing prevents you from also being in IndiaAI, NASSCOM, or accelerator programs while using Sarvam credits
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+ 114 • Code-mixing matters — Sarvam's main differentiator vs. OpenAI/Google for Indian markets is native handling of Hinglish, Tanglish, etc. If your users mix languages mid-sentence, this is the right tool
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+ 115
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116
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+ 117
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+ 118 Sources:
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+ 119 • Sarvam Startup Program (official)
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+ 120 • Sarvam AI Homepage
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+ 121 • Sarvam API Pricing
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+ 122 • Business Today - Sarvam launches startup programme (Mar 5, 2026)
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+ 123 • Business Standard - Sarvam AI launches startup programme
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+ 124 • StartupTalky - Sarvam AI Launches Startup Support Programme
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+ 125 • Sarvam AI - Wikipedia
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