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Bhashini

Also called bhashini app

Bhashini is the Indian government's language AI platform. It lets apps and websites translate, listen and speak in Indian languages.

Names you hearEveryday

In plain words

Bhashini is not a company or a chatbot. It is a shared platform run by the Government of India that offers language tools: translation between languages, turning speech into text (speech recognition) and turning text into speech (text-to-speech).

The name stands for BHASHa INterface for India. It was launched in July 2022 so that people can use the internet and government services in their own language, not only in English or Hindi.

Most people never open Bhashini directly. Government websites, helplines and apps plug into it behind the scenes. A farmer can ask a question by voice in Marathi, the service turns it into text, translates it, finds the answer and reads it back aloud in Marathi. There is also a Bhashini app for translating conversations and text.

Everyday example

The power grid for language

Every house does not build its own power station. It plugs into one grid. Bhashini works like a shared grid for language tools. A ministry website, a railway helpline or a small start-up app plugs in and instantly gets translation and speech in many Indian languages, instead of building its own.

Where the example breaks: Electricity is the same wherever it flows. Language is not: translations and speech recognition can still mishear dialects or get meanings wrong, especially in languages with less training data.

Go deeper

How it actually works

Behind the platform sit many separate AI models, one for each job and language pair, and a public pool of language data to train them.

  1. Collect language data

    Good models need examples. Through BhashaDaan, people can donate recordings, translations and text in their language. Universities and research groups such as AI4Bharat at IIT Madras also build datasets and models.

  2. Train a model for each task

    Separate models handle speech to text, translation, text to speech and reading printed text (OCR). Each is a neural network trained on the data above. Bhashini hosts hundreds of them, many built by partner institutions.

  3. Chain them together

    A voice question in one language and an answer in another needs three models in a row: hear, translate, speak. Bhashini lets developers chain these steps through one API.

  4. Serve apps and websites

    Government departments, banks and start-ups connect to the API. A translation plugin can show a whole website in a reader's chosen language. In February 2026 it added VoicERA, an open-source set of tools for building voice helplines that answer in the caller's language.

Launched
4 July 2022, at Digital India Week in Gandhinagar, Gujarat
Full name
BHASHa INterface for India, part of the National Language Translation Mission
Run by
The Digital India BHASHINI Division of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY)
Used at
The Maha Kumbh 2025 in Prayagraj, for announcements, a chatbot and lost-and-found reports in 11 languages

Private companies such as Sarvam AI also build Indian-language models; some public projects combine both.

Questions people ask

What does Bhashini stand for?

BHASHa INterface for India. "Bhasha" means language in Hindi and many other Indian languages. It is part of the government's National Language Translation Mission.

Can I use Bhashini myself?

Yes. There is a Bhashini app for translating text and speech, downloaded hundreds of thousands of times by early 2025. But most people meet it inside other services, such as a government website that switches language through its translation plugin.

Which languages does Bhashini support?

It covers the 22 scheduled languages of India and more. As of September 2026 it reported 36 Indian languages for text and 23 for voice. Quality varies by language and task.

Is Bhashini the same as Google Translate?

Both translate, but Bhashini is government infrastructure focused on Indian languages, built for other services to plug into. Google Translate is a consumer app and service from one company covering many world languages.

Who made Bhashini?

It was launched by the Government of India's IT ministry, MeitY. Its models come from a network of Indian universities, research labs and start-ups, and it is run by the Digital India BHASHINI Division.

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Further reading

Prepared by Mundhra Labs. Reviewed by Aditya Mundhra. Checked November 2026.