India unveils Patram, the first indigenous AI model for document intelligence

Developed in just five months under the BharatGen initiative, Patram is a 7-billion parameter multimodal AI model built through collaboration between IIIT-Hyderabad and IIT-Bombay, with support from DST, TiH-IoT, and IIIT-H

In a significant leap for India’s artificial intelligence ecosystem, researchers from IIIT-Hyderabad and IIT-Bombay have unveiled Patram-7B-Instruct, the country’s first vision-language AI model designed specifically for document understanding.

Launched at the BharatGen National Summit in New Delhi, Patram represents a groundbreaking step in processing Indian documents through artificial intelligence. The model is capable of reading and analyzing complex paperwork — including scanned, handwritten, or photographed forms — and responding intelligently to queries. Unlike conventional systems trained mostly on Western datasets, Patram is uniquely trained on diverse Indian documents, accounting for multiple languages, layouts, and formats.

Built in just five months, the 7-billion parameter multimodal model was developed under the BharatGen initiative, supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST). The initiative aims to create open-source, India-centric AI tools spanning text, speech, and vision domains. The model’s development involved collaborative efforts from faculty, engineers, and interns at both institutes, with infrastructure and funding support from DST, IIIT-H, and TiH-IoT at IIT-Bombay.

Boost to India's AI sovereignty

Union Minister of State for Science and Technology, Dr. Jitendra Singh, officially launched the model alongside several dignitaries.

Patram has demonstrated high performance on global benchmarks such as DocVQA and VisualMRC, even surpassing larger international models. It also performed strongly on Patram-Bench, a custom evaluation framework tailored to Indian document use-cases.

In addition to Patram, the summit also introduced DocBodh, a generative AI toolkit for document intelligence in Indian contexts. Both models are available open-source via Hugging Face and IndiaAI’s AIKosh platform.

Together, these advancements are set to bolster digital governance, public service delivery, and India’s broader push for technological self-reliance under flagship programs like Digital India and Atmanirbhar Bharat.