The Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD), under the Digital India Corporation and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, in collaboration with the Embassy of India in Kathmandu and Kathmandu University, organized the BHASHINI SANGAM: INTERNATIONAL ENGAGEMENT WORKSHOP in Kathmandu, Nepal on September 1, 2026. This workshop marked a significant step in strengthening India-Nepal collaboration on multilingual and voice-first Artificial Intelligence, building upon the existing Memorandum of Understanding between DIBD and Kathmandu University for collaboration on language technology and digital public infrastructure.
The initiative focuses on co-creating technology, datasets, and locally relevant applications that address the linguistic needs of communities across both countries, with particular emphasis on languages including Nepali, Maithili, and Newari. The workshop brought together stakeholders from government, academia, technology, research, and innovation ecosystems to explore how multilingual AI can enable access to digital services, information, and opportunities in preferred languages.
During the workshop, the BHASHINI team conducted live demonstrations of its multilingual AI capabilities, showcasing speech recognition, real-time translation, voice-enabled interaction, and document processing. A dedicated BhashaDaan session highlighted the role of language data and community participation in building representative AI, with participants exploring contributions across speech, text, and image formats.
The BHASHINI platform currently supports 36 Indian text languages, 23 Indian voice languages, and 35 international languages. It powers over 800 government websites, has enabled more than 9 billion cumulative AI inferences, and processes over 24 million AI inferences daily, making Digital Public Infrastructure more accessible through Language AI. The workshop specifically explored developing local applications in Nepali and other languages by combining BHASHINI's technology ecosystem with Kathmandu University's academic and research capabilities.
Shri Suman Shekhar, First Secretary at the Embassy of India in Kathmandu, emphasized that the MoU provides a strong foundation for developing local applications that can create meaningful value for people across both countries. Shri Amitabh Nag, CEO of Digital India BHASHINI Division, noted that India and Nepal share languages, communities, and deep cultural connections, creating a unique opportunity to build Language AI together with the communities that speak these languages.