New Delhi: Avataar, an AI-native transformational company, announced Varya, a uniquely distilled video model designed to make advanced video AI more affordable, accessible and contextual for India’s next generation of users.
The launch was announced at an event in New Delhi attended by S. Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, and the Avatar leadership team.
Developed with support from IndiaAI Mission, Varya is positioned as a breakthrough in AI-powered video generation, reducing the process from 50 generation steps to just 4 while maintaining output quality. According to Avatar’s internal inference cost benchmark, the model can generate videos at ₹0.48 per second, making it up to 10x more cost-effective compared to some leading global video models.
Avatar said the model aims to enable large-scale adoption of AI video creation across education, commerce, public services, creators, MSMEs, governance and citizen engagement.
The company highlighted that Varya is specifically built to understand India’s cultural and linguistic diversity, enabling video output that reflects local contexts, festivals, communities, local environments, food, clothing, and everyday experiences.
The company noted that Varya’s use cases span classroom education, product marketing, public communications, and storytelling, allowing users to transform simple ideas into video narratives through a streamlined system. “Idea → Video → Story”” Workflow.
Avatar is one of the companies selected under the IndiaAI Mission to develop unique foundational AI capabilities by leveraging subsidized national AI computing infrastructure to accelerate research and development.
In the lecture at the recital, Secretary S. Krishnan Said, “The launch of one of the base models supported under IndiaAI Mission marks a significant milestone in India’s AI journey. Varya represents the research-driven capacity building we are trying to achieve. This is a proud moment that reflects our commitment to building unique AI capabilities and fostering a vibrant deep tech ecosystem. Through 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. ”
Highlighting the importance of efficiency when scaling AI adoptionSravant Aluru, Avatar CEO and Co-Founder, said, “India’s AI opportunity is not only defined by its biggest models, it is also defined by its most efficient models. Varya has demonstrated that frontier-quality video AI can be made dramatically more efficient and accessible. For a country of 1.4 billion people, affordability is not a feature, but a prerequisite. We believe that the next billion stories, lessons, ads, services, and experiences will be We believe that these capabilities should be available to everyone, not just the few.”
Expanding on the company’s broader vision, Aluru added:Affordable AI is inclusive AI. What Avatar is building with Varya is important because it moves the conversation from AI capabilities alone to AI accessibility. India has the talent, market depth, and imagination to build AI products that can be used at population scale. Varya is a powerful example of how Indian companies can compete globally by building more efficient, context-aware models that expand access, rather than just building models at scale. ”
Avatar also announced plans to publish a detailed technical report covering Varya’s architecture, distillation methodology, and benchmark results, reinforcing its commitment to advancing India’s AI research ecosystem.
