Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS) will fulfil the objectives of an orbiting Indian human spaceflight platform in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). This will enable to undertake medium to long duration human spaceflight missions to LEO, as part of the sustained Indian human space program. Similar to other operational space stations, BAS will also comprise of multiple modules and state of the art technological capabilities for carrying out cutting edge scientific research and technology development activities in microgravity environment, targeted towards national priorities and societal applications.

With the recent approval of revision in Gaganyaan Programme, the scope of the program has been expanded to include precursor missions to Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS), including development & launch of 1^st module of BAS (BAS-01). The 1^st module of BAS is targeted to be launched in 2028 timeframe and BAS is expected to be fully operationalised with all modules by 2035 timeframe.

The Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) aims to receive funds amounting to Rs. 50,000 crore during 2023-28 in the form of ANRF Fund, Innovation Fund, Science and Engineering Research Fund, Special Purpose Funds. A budgetary provision of Rs. 14,000 crore is made from the Central Government and remaining amount will be sourced through donations from any other source, including from public sector enterprises, the private sector, philanthropist organizations, foundations or international bodies.

The first meeting of the GB was held on 10^th September 2024 under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister as the President of the GB. The GB discussed strategic interventions of ANRF which are required to accelerate and strengthen the S&T landscape of the country. The deliberations included global positioning of India in key sectors, aligning R&D with national priorities, promoting inclusive growth, capacity building, driving scientific advances and innovation ecosystem, stimulating the latent potential of universities and colleges, bridging the gap between academic research and industrial applications through industry-aligned translational research and implementing programs to boost the country’s research ecosystem and accelerate scientific and technological advancements. R&D programs which were aligned with the discussions, namely, Prime Minister Early Career Research Grant (PMECRG), the Mission for Advancement in High-Impact Areas -Electric Vehicle (MAHA- EV), Inclusivity Research Grant (IRG), Partnerships for Accelerated Innovation and Research (PAIR) have been launched.

BharatGen is a multimodal multilingual large language model initiative, developing advanced generative AI models tailored to India’s linguistic, cultural, and socio-economic diversity. To ensure that generative AI models adequately represent India’s diverse linguistic landscape, BharatGen has launched an initiative called “Bharat Data Sagar”, focusing on primary data collection. This data collection attempts to meet the requirement that training data is available for Indian languages that are lesser represented in data corpora.

BharatGen is building partnerships with research groups across the country, to ensure that the generative AI models being developed can be extended by partners and made available to the larger research and non-academic community for further development and usage. BharatGen is also developing partnerships with the government, industry and start-ups for applications geared towards efficient administration and public at large, including marginalized and underrepresented communities in the country.

In order to promote cultural identity and regional development, BharatGen provides technologies and tools that will support the development of region-specific content by seamlessly translating across local languages and dialects.

BharatGen includes a consortium of top AI researchers across premier academic institutions in India that include IIT Bombay, IIIT Hyderabad, IIT Mandi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, IIM Indore, and IIT Madras. These research groups are partnering with the government, industry and startups to develop models, keeping in mind the linguistic and cultural diversity of India and inclusivity for citizens and to ensure equitable technological access across different socio-economic groups in the country.