To shape the strategy of India’s AI-led language translation platform, Digital India BHASHa INterface for India (BHASHINI), the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) called forth a gathering of 80 startups including researchers.

The session discussed how more Indians, who are connected to the internet, should be able to access global content in their own language.

In the words of Minister of State for MeitY Rajeev Chandrasekhar, “Whereas BharatNet & 5G shall catalyse the ‘connecting all Indians’ to internet goal, initiatives like BHASHINI shall ensure that the citizens consume the internet and digital government services in their own languages”.

The center plans to team up with state governments and other agencies to develop products in the Indian language. To deploy these services the government will involve micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and startups to offer AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP). On a side note, the Indian NLP space is populated by AI conversational startups such as Yellow Messenger, Saarthi, Gnani, Niki, among others.

“Startups are an important part of our Digital ecosystem and will be supported for developing India-specific and Indian Languages enabled IT solutions through Mission Digital India Bhashini”, remarks Chandrasekhar.

While the same, Chandrashekar denoted that startups could receive a great opportunity with multi-linguality in developing innovative solutions and products catering to Indian citizens regardless of the language they know. To facilitate digital inclusion of Indian citizens, he encouraged them to leverage AI and NLP.

He hopes that, “I hope that this may lead to a higher number of AI/language based startups in the country and ultimately unicorns”.

The session was attended by many startups involved working in the India language domain, throwing in their views on different aspects of the mission.

Under the National Language Translation Mission is the larger chunk of Digital India BHASHINI announced at the Budget this year. This initiative aims to create the next generation of government websites enabling users to access them in their preferred language.

BHASHINI is expected to widen the platform by nudging startups to create a diverse range of solutions for the government and build products for the same. In fact, the initiative aims to create benchmark data sets and leverage the platform to provide citizen centric services by publishing application programming interfaces (APIs).

Additionally, it aims to increase the content in Indian languages on the internet particular;y with regards to governance and policy, and science and technology among others.

“As public websites become multilingual and interactive, the reach of public welfare schemes will also increase”, believes Chandrasekhar.