India’s efforts to build indigenous artificial intelligence models received a boost this week as Avataar AI unveiled Varya, a video generation model designed to better understand Indian cultural contexts while significantly reducing the cost associated with AI video creation.The Bengaluru-based startup, backed by Peak XV Partners and selected under govt’s India AI Mission, said the model can recognise local nuances including festivals, clothing, food and architecture — areas where global AI models have often struggled or produced stereotypical outputs.The launch comes as India is looking to establish a stronger presence in AI development. Electronics and IT secretary S Krishnan said, “Varya represents the kind of research-led capability building that we seek to enable.”According to Avataar, Varya generates video up to 10x faster than the base model while requiring far fewer processing steps. Avataar plans to charge around $0.005 per second of generated video, substantially below the rates charged by leading global video AI platforms.
