Finnish smartphone maker HMD is building Indian AI chat on a new smartphone to reach the local market.

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

The Indus program is powered by Sarvam’s locally trained 105-billion-parameter model – a measure of AI’s scale and maturity – and it was launched at the AI ​​conference. The program supports 22 Hindi languages ​​and intercoder switching (the ability to mix languages ​​between conversations, such as switching between Hindi and English), which helps the agent better understand the context of the question. Currently, the app does not support online usage, and it does not have any integration with the device to request an AI assistant via a shortcut.

The partnership is a testing ground where both companies are interested in a chatbot targeting India.

“With this partnership, the first thing we want to do is take the Indus app to consumers,” said Ravi Kunwar, HMD’s CEO and Vice President for India and APAC, in an interview with TechCrunch. “As soon as they start using it, we will go to the second phase to consider driving a car that is more and more stable. In the meantime, by launching the program, we want to make it available to users,” he said.

The Vibe 2 5G is a mid-range Android phone with a 6,000mAh battery and a price tag of ₹10,999($114). Kunwar added that devices in the Vibe range of phones will also be able to access the chatbot, and the company is also expected to launch a phone with Sarvam AI integration in the coming months.

Mobile integration is likely to be very important for both companies. HMD had a 4% share of the Indian smartphone market in 2025, but its mobile phone segment was insignificant – the company does not even appear in the top 15, according to analyst IDC.

Although it is still early days for Indus, the download numbers show this. About three months after its launch, the app has been downloaded more than 293,000 times in India across platforms, according to Appfigures. In comparison, ChatGPT was downloaded 43.9 million times in the country.

That’s a big difference, but the strategy behind the HMD deal may be more important than the initial numbers. Building in the AI ​​assistant community with low-cost devices – especially smartphones – is one of the most direct distribution games available in a large and multi-lingual market like India, where English-language AI tools are not limited. For investors and operators looking at how AI adoption is seeded in emerging markets, this deal is worth following.

Sarvam has become one of the marquee AI startups in India. Beyond the launch of the Indus app, the company focused on businesses, especially voice-based responses. It is about to become one of the top-grossing AI startups in the country, and reports meaning $300 million worth of $1.5 billion is in operation.