HDFC Bank Backs CoRover, Maker of BharatGPT, in Push for Sovereign AI Innovation

HDFC Bank, India’s largest private sector lender, has made a strategic investment in conversational AI startup CoRover, the developer of BharatGPT, India’s sovereign large language model (LLM).

While the investment amount remains undisclosed, the move signals growing corporate interest in homegrown, secure, and multilingual AI solutions.

CoRover powers conversational AI experiences across voice, video, chat, and telephony, and claims to serve over 25,000 enterprises and reach more than 1 billion people.

Its BharatGPT model is designed to be multilingual, domain-adaptable, and optimized for Indian contexts—setting it apart in a market flooded with global LLMs.

“Development of BharatGPT, which enables exchange of information in multiple Indian languages for a diverse country like India, set apart CoRover for us,” said Arup Rakshit, Group Head of Treasury at HDFC Bank. “We are privileged to play a meaningful role in the IndiaAI Startups Global Accelerator Programme through CoRover.”

CoRover CEO Ankush Sabharwal called the investment a shared mission. “This partnership signals a shared commitment to building AI that is sovereign, secure, inclusive, and capable of scaling across India’s most critical sectors, ”he said.