Finnish phone-maker HMD bundles Indian AI chatbot onto new smartphone in push to reach local market

Finnish phone maker HMD today launched its first smartphone, called the Vibe 2 5G, which comes preloaded with Indian AI company Sarvam’s chatbot Indus. Both companies had first announced the partnership during the India AI summit held in New Delhi in February.

The Indus app is powered by Sarvam’s locally trained 105-billion-parameter model — a measure of the AI’s scale and sophistication — and launched at the AI summit. The app supports 22 Indic languages and mid-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 doesn’t support offline usage, and it doesn’t 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 for India and APAC, in an interview with TechCrunch. “Once they start using it, we will move 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 midrange Android phone with a 6,000 mAh battery and a price tag of ₹10,999 ($114). Kunwar added the devices in the Vibe series of smartphones will also get the chatbot, and the company is also expected to launch a feature phone with Sarvam AI integration in the coming months.

That feature phone integration may ultimately prove more significant for both companies. HMD held a 4% share of India’s feature phone market in 2025, but its smartphone share was negligible — the company doesn’t even appear in the top 15, according to analyst firm IDC.

While it’s early days for Indus, the download numbers reflect that. Nearly three months after its launch, the app has been downloaded just over 293,000 times in India across platforms, according to Appfigures. By comparison, ChatGPT was downloaded 43.9 million times in the country.

It’s a big gap, but the strategy behind the HMD deal may matter more than the early numbers. Bundling a regional AI assistant with affordable hardware — particularly 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 watching how AI adoption gets seeded in emerging markets, this partnership is worth tracking.

Sarvam has been one of India’s marquee AI startups. Beyond 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 funding round of $300 million at a $1.5 billion valuation is in the works.

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