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Recently, the Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Kathmandu University Centre for Digital Public Infrastructure and Artificial Intelligence to strengthen cooperation in multilingual AI, Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), and language technologies. The partnership reflects India's growing role in promoting digital public goods and AI-driven governance beyond its borders.

What is the Digital India BHASHINI Division?

• The Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD) functions under the Digital India Corporation, which operates under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
• It serves as India's flagship initiative for AI-driven multilingual digital inclusion and language technology development.
• At its core is the BHASHINI platform (BHASHaINterface for India), which seeks to bridge India's linguistic diversity by making digital services accessible in multiple Indian languages through Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing (NLP).

Key Features

• Through the National Hub for Language Technology (NHLT), BHASHINI provides scalable speech and text-based AI solutions for governance, public service delivery, education, and digital platforms.
• The initiative promotes open-source innovation, multilingual AI research, dataset creation, startup support, and academic collaboration.
• The platform has emerged as a critical component of India's Digital Public Infrastructure ecosystem by enabling seamless communication across languages and improving digital accessibility.

Scale and Reach

BHASHINI has witnessed significant adoption across government platforms and digital services:

• Powers more than 800 government websites.
• Processes over 15 million AI inferences daily.
• Supports 36 Indian text languages.
• Supports 23 Indian voice languages.
• Provides capabilities in 35 international languages.

The platform also makes AI and NLP resources available in the public domain for MSMEs, startups, researchers, and innovators, fostering the development of indigenous language technologies.