In a significant step towards strengthening digital inclusion and expanding access to government procurement opportunities, the Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD) and the Government e Marketplace (GeM) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to integrate advanced multilingual capabilities across India’s public procurement ecosystem.
The partnership, signed under the “BHASHINI for Seva/Sanchalan – A BHASHINI Sahayogi Program,” aims to leverage BHASHINI’s artificial intelligence-powered language technologies to make GeM’s services accessible in multiple Indian languages, thereby enabling greater participation from businesses, particularly micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), startups, entrepreneurs, and local enterprises across the country.
The collaboration seeks to promote multilingual governance, multilingual service delivery, and language-inclusive digital access by allowing users to interact with procurement services in their preferred languages. It will support seamless communication across all 22 officially recognised Indian languages and several other Indian languages through advanced voice-first technologies and generative AI solutions.
The Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY) said the initiative is designed to eliminate language barriers that often limit participation in government procurement opportunities, especially for businesses operating in diverse linguistic regions of India.
Under the agreement, GeM and BHASHINI will jointly develop and deploy multilingual digital public infrastructure through several flagship initiatives, including BHASHINI Udyat, Mitra, Appmitra, Sahyogi, and Pravakta. The collaboration will focus on integrating translation APIs, creating domain-specific language models, developing multilingual glossaries, building voice-enabled applications and chatbots, and expanding linguistic datasets to improve user experience across the GeM platform.
The initiative is expected to transform the way businesses interact with public procurement systems by enabling sellers and buyers to access information, complete transactions, communicate, and navigate digital services in their native languages.
According to MeitY, the partnership will strengthen multilingual AI models specifically tailored to public procurement, government services, commerce, and business participation. The focus will be on creating seamless voice-enabled experiences that can cater to India’s vast linguistic diversity while ensuring wider access to government services.
The discussions surrounding the collaboration underscored the growing role of language technologies in improving Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) and expanding economic opportunities. By making procurement services more accessible in regional languages, the initiative aims to encourage greater participation from businesses that may previously have faced challenges due to language constraints.
The MoU also includes provisions for encouraging language data contributions through the Bhashadaan initiative, conducting awareness programmes, promoting capacity-building activities, and increasing the adoption of multilingual AI tools across institutions and stakeholders associated with the GeM ecosystem.
In addition, both organisations will work together to collect, curate, and disseminate linguistic resources that can further enhance multilingual support and improve the overall efficiency of procurement-related services.
The collaboration also leaves room for future joint initiatives aimed at strengthening India’s multilingual digital infrastructure, promoting innovation, and enabling broader adoption of language technologies across public service delivery platforms.
Speaking on the occasion, Ajit B. Chavan, Additional Chief Executive Officer and Chief Seller Officer at GeM, said the partnership would help make public procurement more accessible to businesses across India.
“The collaboration aims to leverage BHASHINI’s AI-powered language technologies to break linguistic barriers in public procurement and make GeM more accessible to buyers and sellers across the country,” he said.
Echoing similar sentiments, Amitabh Nag, Chief Executive Officer of the Digital India BHASHINI Division, said the initiative reflects the government’s commitment to building an inclusive digital ecosystem.
“BHASHINI is committed to making digital public infrastructure truly inclusive by enabling citizens and enterprises to interact in their preferred Indian languages. Our collaboration with GeM will help democratize access to public procurement through multilingual and voice-enabled technologies, ensuring that language is no longer a barrier to participation. Together, we are empowering local businesses, MSMEs, startups, and Swadeshi enterprises to connect with national opportunities while strengthening India’s vision of a digitally inclusive economy,” Nag said.
The partnership further reinforces BHASHINI’s role as India’s national language digital public infrastructure and a key enabler of inclusive digital governance.
Operating under MeitY through the Digital India Corporation, BHASHINI has emerged as a cornerstone of India’s multilingual AI ecosystem. Through the National Hub for Language Technology (NHLT), the platform provides speech and text-based AI services across Indian languages and supports governance, public platforms, institutions, and businesses.
Currently, BHASHINI powers more than 800 government websites, processes over 15 million AI inferences every day, and supports 36 Indian text languages, 23 Indian voice languages, and 35 international languages. The platform also promotes open-source innovation, multilingual AI research, dataset creation, startup enablement, and academic collaboration.
With the latest partnership, both BHASHINI and GeM aim to create a more transparent, accessible, and inclusive public procurement ecosystem, ensuring that language ceases to be a barrier to economic participation and enabling businesses from every corner of the country to engage more effectively with government procurement opportunities.
