Small Language Models (SLMs)

While Large Language Models (LLMs) such as GPT-4 and Gemini hve been in the news and attract investments, small language models (SLMs) are gaining traction in India. They are affordable, efficient and are relevant in resource-constrained environments.

SLMs are compact, energy-efficient and operate on local devices without requiring continuous cloud access. They are suited for Indian-use cases.

CoRover has launched BharatGPT Mini, a compact SLM in December 2024. It ensures reliable performance even in offline mode and offers a practical, cost-effective alternative to cloud-dependent LLMs.

LLMs have significant infrastructure demands. SLMs have an edge here.

They are good for task-specific applications. They are suited for domain-specific needs, e.g. Fractal has introduced Kalaido-ai-for image generation and Vaidya.ai for medical and health queries. India’s linguistic diversity further boosts relevance of SLMs. Gnani-ai has developed voice-first SLMs trained on Indic language conversations. Automate-365 and Armair-365 have been widely adopted.