Avataar AI launches Varya video model at $0.005 per second, 27x cheaper than global rivals

Cheaper, faster, and culturally aware, Avataar's video AI is built for India's scale

India's AI model output has been slow compared to the U.S., Europe, and China. Only a few startups are releasing models, and most of them are large language models or voice models. To encourage more development, the government launched the India AI Mission, a roughly $1.2 billion initiative that -- among other things -- gives selected startups access to subsidized GPU compute in exchange for releasing their models publicly. One of the 12 startups selected for the program, Avataar AI, has launched a new video model called Varya that is built to understand local context -- such as identifying different festivals, food, and clothing. The Peak XV-backed startup, which focuses on creating video tools for e-commerce, didn't build Varya from scratch. It started with Wan 2.2, a publicly available video generation model released by Alibaba, and used a technique called distillation -- essentially compressing the model's capabilities into a leaner, faster version optimized for Avataar's specific use cases. The result is a model that runs in four steps rather than Wan 2.2's 50, producing video 10 times faster and at a fraction of the cost. To put that in concrete terms: using an NVIDIA H200 GPU, Varya can generate a 5-second 720p clip in 45 seconds, compared to 1,230 seconds for Wan 2.2. The most striking aspect of Varya may be its price. The company plans to charge ₹0.48 ($0.005) per second of video on its hosted service -- far cheaper than models like Veo, Kling, Luma, and Runway, which typically charge $0.10 or more per second. That's a roughly 20x price difference. "India is a video-first market. We see this across every large consumer internet product in India: video wins over text. Current AI video models are too expensive for population-scale use in India. If video AI is going to reach students, teachers, MSMEs, creators, enterprises, and public services, costs have to come down dramatically. Cost is the biggest unlock for AI adoption in India," Peak XV's managing director Rajan Anandan told TechCrunch. Image and video generation models often miss cultural nuances and produce stereotyped or generic outputs -- a problem TechCrunch has reported on before. Avataar AI says it has used curated data to train Varya to recognize cultural nuances including food, clothing, architecture, and festivals. Varya will be released as an open-weight model on India's AI Kosh portal -- the Indian government's centralized repository for publicly available AI models and datasets -- along with its training data, meaning developers can self-host or modify it for their own needs. Avataar also plans to make the model available to its enterprise customers and says it is open to partnerships with video tools including Higgsfield and Adobe Firefly. Anyone can try it now on its website using text prompts or reference images. Varya's launch reflects a fundamental tradeoff in India's AI ambitions. Industry veterans have noted that India can make its mark in AI by creating applications and a robust developer ecosystem rather than competing on foundation models. And there's a reason for that pragmatism: model development has been slower in India than in global rivals due to a lack of compute and limited quality data availability. The India AI Mission is also part of a broader government push to close that gap. Last year, it selected 12 startups -- Avataar AI among them -- to develop AI models and provided them with cost-efficient compute. Earlier this year, IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said India aims to attract $200 billion in AI investment by 2028 and more than double its GPU capacity within six months.

India's Avataar AI launches a video model that costs $0.005 per second, 27x cheaper than rivals

Avataar AI launched Varya, an open-weight video model at $0.005/second, 27x cheaper than rivals. Built under India's AI Mission, it renders Indian culture accurately. Bangalore-based Avataar AI has launched Varya, one of India's first homegrown video AI models. It generates video at roughly $0.005 per second, or 0.48 rupees. Founder Sravanth Aluru, a former Deutsche Bank investment banker and Microsoft and IIT Mumbai alum, says that is 27 times cheaper than comparable open-source video models. The cost advantage comes from distillation. Avataar started with Alibaba's Wan 2.2, a publicly available video generation model, and compressed its capabilities into a leaner version that runs in four steps instead of 50. The result is ten times faster generation at a fraction of the cost. Models like Veo, Kling, Luma, and Runway typically charge $0.10 or more per second. Varya is not trying to compete with US and Chinese frontier models on quality. ByteDance's Seedance, Kuaishou's Kling, and Alibaba's Wan are pushing motion realism and audio generation far beyond what Varya offers. The pitch is scale and accessibility in a market of 1.4 billion people where cost competitiveness matters more than peak performance. What makes Varya distinct is cultural specificity. Rather than retrofitting a Western-trained model, Avataar used curated data to train Varya to render Indian clothing, food, architecture, festivals, and everyday settings accurately. Global models trained primarily on Western datasets consistently fail at this, producing culturally wrong outputs that limit their usefulness for Indian businesses, education, and public services. The model is open-weight and will be released on India's AIKosh portal, the government's centralised repository for AI models and datasets. Avataar is one of 12 startups selected for the IndiaAI Mission, a roughly $1.2 billion initiative that gives selected companies access to subsidised GPU compute in exchange for releasing their models publicly. Avataar has raised $55 million from Peak XV Partners and Tiger Global. The company originally focused on creating video tools for e-commerce. Varya is its first foundation model, reflecting a broader trend of Indian startups building sovereign AI rather than renting Western infrastructure. Sarvam and BharatGen launched their own foundational models earlier this year under the same programme. India's AI strategy is different from Europe's or China's. It is not trying to build the biggest model. It is trying to build models that work for its population at a price its market can absorb. At $0.005 per second, Varya is testing whether a video model optimised for affordability and cultural relevance can gain adoption faster than a technically superior but expensive Western alternative. In a country where AI startups are already building for local needs at scale, the answer may well be yes.

20 foundational AI models created under IndiaAI Mission, 5 released : MeitY secretary

IndiaAI Mission has fostered the creation of 20 foundational artificial intelligence models. Five of these models have now been released. Avataar AI has launched Varya, the first homegrown distilled video generation model. This technology significantly speeds up video creation and reduces costs. The government is actively supporting the development of these crucial AI tools. IndiaAI Mission-supported startups have so far created 20 foundational artificial intelligence models, of which five have been released, electronics and information technology secretary S Krishnan said on Friday. Krishnan was speaking at the launch of Varya, the first homegrown distilled video-generation model created by government-funded startup Avataar AI. Distilled video generation is a machine learning technique where a compact 'student' AI model replicates the outputs of a larger 'teacher' model while eliminating redundant computation, producing similar results much faster and with less compute power. Varya reduces the number of steps for video generation from 50 to four and churns out videos at a cost of just Rs 0.48 per second. Sravanth Aluru, CEO and cofounder of Avataar AI, said the model is a fully made-in-India product. Even the compute and engineers used to build it were Indian. "In the future, where AI and robotics will come together, robots will have cameras, but they will need vision AI that can understand the world," Aluru said. For developing sovereign models, the government funds research consortia, subsidises access to over 38,000 graphics processing units (GPUs), and supports a cohort of selected technology organisations. The foundational models released so far include IIT Bombay-based academic consortium BharatGen's multimodal large language model (LLM) designed to integrate text, speech, and image understanding across 22 Indian languages, and a 105 billion parameter model by startup Sarvam. The Centre is supporting numeric models as well as those assisting in scientific models and medical diagnostics. As these models become more prevalent and available in India, India's data and experiences will be shared and used more widely within the country, Krishnan said.

India won't be second to anybody in developing foundational AI models: IT Secretary

India is stepping up its AI game with the launch of Varya, its first indigenous AI video model. Developed by Avataar. ai with support from the IndiaAI Mission, Varya promises to make high-quality video creation cheaper and easier. This innovation aims to unlock new markets and boost productivity across the nation. India will not lag behind in its efforts to develop foundational AI models and those developed under the IndiaAI mission are a response to people who have questioned the country's potential in coming up with advanced AI platforms, a senior government official said on Friday. While launching the country's first video foundational model by start-up Avataar. ai, Electronics and IT Secretary S Krishnan said that the government has supported a range of foundational models across different applications, not just language models. "For all those people who say that model making or these kind of efforts cannot succeed in India, this (Avataar. ai's video platform) is an answer that shows that it can actually be done, and it's an answer that shows that India won't be second to anybody in an effort of this nature," Krishnan said. Avataar. Ai launched Varya, an indigenous AI video model developed with support from the IndiaAI Mission to make high-quality video generation more affordable, accessible and relevant for India. Users can upload photos and raw videos on the platform and generate an edited version by just writing details of the desired video output. Avataar CEO and Co-Founder Sravanth Aluru said that users will be able to create a 211-second video for every Rs 100 they spend on the platform. He claimed that Varya will cut video generation time from 50 steps to 4 which makes it 10 times more efficient over leading models. "We are today about 27x faster in video generation and equally 27 times cheaper in video generation. The reason why we've done that is we believe together as a collective that if we really want to unlock the productivity curve in India, affordable AI is very important," Aluru said. Aluru said that the firm has developed a video AI platform by using 14 billion parameters. "We anticipate that we'll be unlocking markets that were not served yesterday. We'll likely create new markets by people who weren't doing videos because they thought it's too expensive and too cumbersome to actually start doing videos. We'll have to see and evolve the overall impact," he said. When asked about the impact on the jobs in the video development segment, Aluru said that there is a need to upskill people and AI tools will need to work along with human ingenuity. "We are allowing ideas and imagination of the creator, which is where the value lies. Convert them into actual physical videos that you can see in an efficient way. We're removing the grunt work, but preserving the ability for someone to develop a great idea that was never thought before. I think there's enough originality and human ingenuity that still exists," Aluru said.