Google Cloud Strengthens AI Capabilities in India with IIT Madras Collaboration

Google Cloud revealed significant AI investments in India, including support for a new community-based platform to assess AI models for Indian languages and contexts and increased local computation capacity driven by Trillium TPUs. Through its AI Hypercomputer architecture, the tech giant is dramatically expanding the capacity of AI hardware in India, allowing companies and government agencies to train and implement sophisticated Gemini models locally.

This extension lowers latency for AI applications while meeting data residency and sovereignty requirements. In a first for the firm, Google Cloud is also giving Indian customers early access to its most sophisticated Gemini models with complete data residency support. The solution incorporates Google Maps-based grounding features for location-aware answers, Gemini 2.5 Flash with batch processing capabilities, and Document AI for automating document operations.

Sharing his views on the development, Devarsh Saraf, Founder & CEO, Bombay Founders’ Club stated, "I’m really excited about what Google Cloud and IIT Madras are doing together. To me, this is a clear signal that cutting-edge research and rock-solid infrastructure can thrive side-by-side right here in India. By combining IIT Madras’s incredible track record of deep, problem-driven research with Google Cloud’s powerful, scalable tools, we’re giving startups the confidence to turn bold AI ideas into reality. It facilitates building a homegrown ecosystem where students, researchers, and entrepreneurs learn, iterate and launch world-class products without having to look abroad for support."

Google Partners with IIT Madras to Launch Indic LLM-Arena

Google Cloud is helping to build Indic LLM-Arena, an unbiased review platform run by the AI4Bharat centre, in collaboration with IIT Madras. Users submit prompts in any Indian language, even code-mixed queries like Hinglish, and vote on anonymous AI models' answers in this crowdsourced, blind comparison platform. Across India's linguistic terrain, "Indic Arena will be that platform" for standardised measuring.

Expressing his views on the development, Dipal Dutta, CEO at RedoQ stated, "The partnership between Google Cloud, including Google DeepMind, and IIT Madras’s AI4Bharat centre is a fantastic development that accelerates India's AI capabilities. The launch of Indic Arena, an independent, community-driven platform designed to benchmark AI models across India's diverse languages, cultural contexts, and safety needs, will close the performance gap created by models trained on Western data. This will directly enable high-performing, culturally relevant models that can be integrated into Indian client projects, enhancing everything from ERP systems to customer service functions."

"Furthermore, Google Cloud's commitment to expanding local AI computing capacity using its AI Hypercomputer architecture and Trillium TPUs addresses non-negotiable requirements, such as low latency and, crucially, data residency and digital sovereignty compliance. The ability to train and serve advanced models, such as Gemini, locally through Vertex AI is a huge advantage for businesses across India. By collaborating with IIT Madras, the initiative also ensures investment in the Indian AI talent pipeline, providing access to cutting-edge tools and resources. The collaboration shifts AI development in India from a passive global receiver to a global developer," Dutta added.

The Move Aims to Fill the AI Gap Among Indian Dialects

The project fills important holes in the present assessment of AI, which primarily concentrates on English and Western environments. The platform currently supports text-based inputs and intends to expand to vision, audio, and agentic tasks involving documents and web searches.

Indic LLM-Arena evaluates models on three dimensions: linguistic diversity, including code-switching; cultural appropriateness for India's regional contexts; and safety filters for India-specific harms, such as caste-based stereotypes and communal misinformation.

The actions highlight India's increasing significance in the global AI ecosystem. According to Saurabh Tiwary, Vice President, Google Cloud AI, the country's developer community, thriving startup ecosystem, and top businesses are embracing AI at an astonishing rate. Google Cloud is providing cloud credits to power the infrastructure.