The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on Wednesday launched VoicERA, an open-source, end-to-end Voice AI stack, at the India AI Impact Summit 2026. The initiative is aimed at strengthening India’s Digital Public Infrastructure by enabling multilingual voice technologies at scale.
The rollout was led by the Digital India BHASHINI Division under the Digital India Corporation. Amitabh Nag, Chief Executive Officer of the Digital India BHASHINI Division, guided the initiative in collaboration with EkStep Foundation, the Centre for Open Source Software at IIIT Bengaluru, AI4Bharat, and experts from IIT Madras.
VoicERA has been deployed directly on the BHASHINI National Language Infrastructure, creating what officials describe as a national execution layer for multilingual voice and language AI systems. Designed to be open, modular and interoperable, the platform supports both cloud and on-premise deployment. This architecture allows government departments, research institutions and innovation ecosystems to build secure and scalable voice solutions without being tied to proprietary vendors.
With this integration, BHASHINI’s scope expands beyond translation and text-based language technologies to include real-time speech systems, conversational AI and multilingual telephony services. Departments can deploy voice-enabled citizen services in areas such as agriculture advisories, education support, livelihood services, grievance redressal mechanisms, citizen feedback systems and public scheme discovery.
Amitabh Nag said the launch marks a shift in how citizens interact with digital systems. He noted that with BHASHINI as the national language backbone and VoicERA as the execution layer, voice can become a natural interface for digital public services. According to him, the framework is intended to ensure secure and scalable multilingual systems while allowing innovators to build on a shared public foundation. He added that the focus is on access and inclusion so that every citizen can communicate with the State in their own language.
Santosh Kevlani, Voice AI Strategist and Advisor to the initiative, described VoicERA as a digital public good built to enable interoperable and deployment-ready voice systems without rebuilding entire technology stacks from scratch.
Shankar Maruwada, Co-Founder and CEO of EkStep Foundation, said BHASHINI has demonstrated how language can function as digital infrastructure over the past three years. With VoicERA, he said, the same principle now extends to voice, widening equitable access across the country.
Mitesh Kapra of IIT Madras observed that deeper integration of BHASHINI with VoicERA would strengthen India’s sovereign capabilities in language and voice technologies while supporting inclusive AI innovation.
Officials said the launch reinforces BHASHINI’s role as a population-scale language and voice infrastructure, supporting secure, interoperable and inclusive AI systems to improve public service delivery across sectors and regions.
