Bengaluru, June 17 -- On 26 April, IIT Madras-incubated artificial intelligence startup, Sarvam, became the first to receive subsidized access to processing chips from the Union government to build Indian AI models. Now, after facing conjecture and criticism over government supportand the startup's innovation route, its founder and investors believe that the way forward for India's most well-funded AI startup is to take a leaf out of the Big Tech playbook.

"We're not just a model builder," Pratyush Kumar, co-founder of Sarvam, toldMint on the sidelines of a gathering in Bengaluru last week. "We have an application layer too, and we want to be focused on both (the model and the layer)."

The startup has faced criticism after it last month...