The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on Wednesday unveiled VoicERA, an open-source, end-to-end Voice AI stack, at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, marking a major step forward in strengthening India’s Digital Public Infrastructure for multilingual voice technologies.
The launch was led by the Digital India BHASHINI Division under the Digital India Corporation, an entity of MeitY. Amitabh Nag, Chief Executive Officer of the Digital India BHASHINI Division, spearheaded the initiative in collaboration with the EkStep Foundation, the Centre for Open Source Software, IIIT Bengaluru, and AI4Bharat.
Deployed directly on the BHASHINI National Language Infrastructure, VoicERA establishes a national execution layer for multilingual Voice and Language AI. The platform has been designed to be open, modular, interoperable, cloud-deployable, and ready for on-premise use, enabling secure and scalable deployment across government agencies, research institutions, and innovation ecosystems. Its flexible architecture reduces duplication of effort while avoiding vendor lock-in, accelerating the development and adoption of inclusive voice-based digital services nationwide.
This integration expands BHASHINI’s capabilities beyond translation and language technologies to encompass real-time speech systems, conversational AI, and multilingual telephony at population scale. Government departments can now quickly deploy voice-enabled citizen services in areas such as agriculture advisories, education support, livelihood services, grievance redressal, citizen feedback, and scheme discovery.
Amitabh Nag emphasized the platform’s transformative potential. “With BHASHINI as national language infrastructure and VoicERA as the open execution stack, India is entering a new phase of Digital Public Infrastructure where voice becomes the most natural interface for Bharat,” he said. “This framework enables secure, scalable multilingual systems while empowering innovators to build on a shared national foundation. It is about dignity, access, and ensuring every citizen can speak to the State and be understood. This marks the beginning of a new Voice Era, and in this era, India owns its voice.”
Santosh Kevlani, Voice AI Strategist and Advisor to the initiative, described VoicERA as a digital public good for voice. “VoicERA is designed as digital public good for voice, enabling interoperable, execution-ready deployment without reconstructing entire technology stacks,” he stated.
Shankar Maruwada, Co-Founder and CEO of EkStep Foundation, highlighted the progression from BHASHINI’s language focus. “Over the past three years, BHASHINI has demonstrated the power of language as Digital Public Infrastructure,” he said. “With VoicERA, that vision now extends to voice, strengthening equitable access for citizens at national scale.”
Mitesh Kapra from IIT Madras noted the boost to sovereign capabilities. “The continued expansion of BHASHINI, integrated with VoicERA, will accelerate sovereign language and voice capabilities and deepen inclusive AI innovation,” he added.
The launch reinforces BHASHINI’s role as India’s population-scale Language and Voice Infrastructure, supporting secure, inclusive, and interoperable AI systems that drive next-generation public service delivery across sectors and regions.
