Vivek Raghavan

Vivek Raghavan is a technologist and co-founder of Sarvam AI, a company building artificial-intelligence models and products for Indian languages and use cases.

Journey

Raghavan earned a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and completed an MS and PhD in electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He spent roughly two decades in electronic design automation, holding senior roles at companies including Magma Design Automation, Synopsys and Avant. Public profiles also credit him with founding and selling two businesses in that field.

He later moved into population-scale digital infrastructure in India. Raghavan played a major role in the design and implementation of Aadhaar as Chief Product Manager and Biometric Architect at the Unique Identification Authority of India. His work expanded from commercial software systems to public digital systems that had to function across large, diverse populations.

Raghavan subsequently supported Indian-language technology through roles connected with Digital India Bhashini and AI4Bharat, the open-source research initiative at IIT Madras. There he worked with Pratyush Kumar, whose research focused on artificial intelligence for Indian languages.

The two founded Sarvam AI in August 2023. Their premise was that India needed AI systems designed for its languages, costs, institutions and ways of using technology, rather than relying only on models created for English-first markets. Sarvam has worked across models, voice, enterprise software and the infrastructure needed to deploy AI at scale.

Working approach

Raghavan’s career shows a preference for full systems rather than isolated demonstrations. His work on chip-design software, Aadhaar and Sarvam connects research with implementation, reliability and broad access.

Assessment

His unusual strength is experience across private technology companies and national digital infrastructure. Sarvam’s test is whether that experience can produce useful, competitive AI systems while managing the high capital requirements and fast technical change of the sector.