Ani |
Update date: June 12, 2026 12:33 IST
new delhi [India]June 12 (ANI): Avataar.ai on Friday launched Varya, an indigenous distilled video model designed to make frontier video artificial intelligence affordable and culturally relevant to users across India. The model, announced at a press event in New Delhi, aims to reduce implementation costs while accurately representing the country’s regional and visual diversity.
According to an Avatar press release, the company has developed the model to understand and generate visual output across India’s unique regions, festivals, communities and public spaces. The initiative specifically targets applications in education, commerce, governance, citizen services, and digital storytelling for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
Avatar was selected by IndiaAI Mission to build indigenous foundational AI capabilities. The study leveraged the country’s subsidized AI computing infrastructure to accelerate model development.
S. Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, said at the launch, “The launch of one of the foundational models supported under the IndiaAI mission marks a significant milestone in India’s AI journey. Varya represents the research-driven capacity building we are seeking to deliver.”
Varya’s technical framework relies on a distillation technique that reduces video generation from 50 steps to 4 steps. The company’s internal inference cost benchmarks show that the model “produces video at Rs 0.48 per second and is up to 10x more cost-effective than some leading global video models.”
“This is a proud moment that reflects our commitment to building indigenous AI capabilities and fostering a vibrant deep technology ecosystem,” added Krishnan. “Through our strategic support of foundational models, we are enabling innovation at scale and creating the building blocks for the next generation of AI solutions. We look forward to further strengthening India’s AI capabilities and driving frugal innovation that is world-class and accessible at population scale.”
Sravanth Aluru, CEO and co-founder of Avatar, said: “India’s AI opportunity is not only defined by the biggest models, but also by the most efficient. Varya shows that frontier-quality video AI can be dramatically more efficient and accessible. For a country of 1.4 billion people, affordability is not a feature, but a prerequisite. We are committed to the next 10 We believe billions of stories, lessons, ads, services, and experiences will be created through AI. These capabilities should be available to everyone, not just the few.”
The application works with sequences where the user enters text or uploads images to generate video clips, and also has the ability to extend the sequence through additional clips. Avatar said it will publish a technical report detailing the model’s architecture, distillation methods and benchmarks.
Aluru added, “Affordable AI is inclusive AI. What Avatar is building with Varya is important as it moves the conversation from AI capabilities alone to AI accessibility. India has the talent, market depth and imagination to build AI products for use at population scale.” “Varya is a powerful example of how Indian companies can compete globally, not just by building large models, but by building more efficient, context-aware models that expand access.” (Ani)
