Finnish phone maker HMD today launched its first smartphone, called the Vibe 2 5G, which comes pre-loaded with Indian AI firm Sarvam’s chatbot Indus. Both companies had first announced the partnership during the India AI Summit in New Delhi in February.
The Indus app is powered by Sarvam’s locally trained model with 105 billion parameters—a measure of the AI’s scale and sophistication—and launched at the AI ​​Summit. The app supports 22 Indian languages ​​and inter-sentence code-switching (the ability to fluidly mix languages ​​mid-conversation, like switching between Hindi and English), which helps the assistant better understand the context of a query. Currently, the application does not support offline use and does not have any integrated feature with the device to invoke the AI ​​assistant through a shortcut.
The partnership is a potential testing ground for both companies to gauge the appetite for an India-focused chatbot.
“With this partnership, the first thing we want to do is get the Indus app to consumers,” said Ravi Kunwar, HMD’s CEO and Vice President of India and APAC, in an interview with TechCrunch. “Once they start using it, we’ll go to phase two to focus on driving more traction and stickiness. Right now, by preloading the app, we want to be more accessible to users,” he said.
The Vibe 2 5G is a mid-range Android phone with a 6,000 mAh battery and a price tag of INR 10,999 ($114). Kunwar added that the devices in the Vibe series of smartphones will also get chatbot and the company is also expected to launch a feature phone with Sarvam AI integration in the coming months.
This feature phone integration may ultimately prove to be more significant for both companies. HMD had a 4% share of India’s feature phone market by 2025, but its smartphone share was negligible — the company doesn’t even feature in the top 15, according to analyst firm IDC.
While it’s early days for Indus, the download numbers reflect that. Almost three months after its launch, the app has been downloaded just over 293,000 times in India across platforms, according to Appfigures. In comparison, ChatGPT was downloaded 43.9 million times in the country.
It’s a big gap, but the strategy behind the HMD deal may mean more than the early numbers. Assembling a regional AI assistant with affordable hardware — especially feature phones — is one of the more direct distribution plays available in a market as large and linguistically diverse as India, where English-language AI tools have limited reach. For investors and operators looking at how AI adoption is being seeded in emerging markets, this partnership is worth tracking.
Sarvam has been one of India’s marquee AI startups. Apart from the Indus app launch, the company has focused on enterprise partnerships, especially for voice-based solutions. It is on track to become one of the most funded AI startups in the country, with reports suggesting a $300 million funding round valued at $1.5 billion is in the works.
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