PM Modi's 23-Point Viksit Bharat Roadmap: What the Zoho, Sarvam, Arattai Endorsement Actually Means for India's $1 Trillion Digital Stack
On 22 August 2026, Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave India's $1-trillion-tech-industry something it has lobbied for since 2014 but rarely received: a written, cross-ministerial instruction from the Cabinet Secretary telling every Union ministry to prefer Indian digital platforms over foreign ones. The directive is embedded in a 23-point Viksit Bharat @2047 action plan that emerged from Modi's interaction with top bureaucrats on 22 July and was circulated to all secretaries on 29 July by Cabinet Secretary T.V. Somanathan.
Source: Bing Images (educational use)
Three names appear in the document by name: Zoho, Sarvam, and Arattai. The list is short but the signal is loud. For India's enterprise software sector, AI startups, and the long tail of messaging and SaaS companies built in the country, this is the moment policy turns from rhetoric to procurement.
This is also more than a tech story. The 23 points cover everything from how India will pick its 2036 Olympic athletes (start scouting at age 5), to how ITI graduates can earn a degree, to how senior citizens get paid as mentors. The "use Indian tech" line is one piece of a much larger governance reset.
This blog unpacks the full roadmap, names the platforms and the founders, surfaces the real data points (Zoho's $1 billion revenue run rate, Sarvam's 1-trillion-parameter model, Arattai's 100x sign-up surge), and gives you a checklist of what to watch, do, and demand over the next 18 months.
The 5W1H at a glance
| What | 23-point Viksit Bharat @2047 action plan, including a directive to use Indian digital, AI and messaging platforms (Zoho, Sarvam, Arattai specifically named) |
|---|---|
| Who | PM Modi, Cabinet Secretary T.V. Somanathan, all Union ministries and secretaries |
| When | PM–Secretaries meeting 22 July 2026 → Cabinet Secretary communication 29 July 2026 → public reporting 22 August 2026 |
| Where | South Block / Cabinet Secretariat, New Delhi — applies pan-India |
| Why | Reduce data exposure to foreign platforms, build an Indian digital stack, position India as a developed nation by 2047 |
| How | Each ministry must now create an action plan, name nodal officers, and report progress; non-compliance will show up in the next PM–Secretaries review |
1. Why this 23-point plan matters more than earlier "swadeshi" announcements
Since 2014, India has issued repeated calls for "Atmanirbhar Bharat" in digital infrastructure. The PM-WANI public Wi-Fi push in 2020, the India Semiconductor Mission in 2021, and the IndiaAI Mission in 2024 all had budget lines. What they lacked was a written, ministry-by-ministry execution order tied to specific platforms.
The 23-point plan fixes that gap. The Cabinet Secretary's office circulated the plan to every secretary on 29 July with explicit implementation instructions. By naming three specific platforms — Zoho (productivity software), Sarvam (AI), Arattai (messaging) — the government has set a precedent: ministries that continue to procure foreign equivalents will now need to file a written justification.
Two structural changes make this different from past announcements:
- Whole-of-government framing. The plan tells secretaries to lead on "public interest, not departmental interest." That puts AI platform adoption, sports-talent scouting, and ITI-degree bridges into the same scorecard as any other ministry KPI. A secretary who does nothing on Zoho migration will be visible.
- Whole-of-society framing. The plan addresses 5-year-olds (Olympic 2036 talent), university students (Viksit Bharat ambassadors), ITI students (degree pathways), senior citizens (mentor roles), and farmers (solar-fence income). That isn't a policy paper; it is a population-level behaviour-change programme.
2. The three platforms Modi named — and what each one actually does
2.1 Zoho: the productivity stack for ministries
Zoho Corporation, founded in 1996 by Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas, runs more than 55 cloud applications spanning CRM, mail, accounting, HR, helpdesk, and project management. As of February 2026, Zoho reported crossing 1 million paying customers across 150+ countries.
Vembu's own disclosure, made in a series of X posts in August 2026, is the number that matters most for procurement policy: 90 per cent of Zoho's revenue comes from outside India; only about 2 per cent comes from Indian government contracts. That is the credibility argument the plan needs — Zoho is not a vendor that grew up on government subsidies. It is profitable, bootstrapped (never raised VC), and globally competitive on price.
| Zoho at a glance | |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Chennai, Tamil Nadu (with global HQ in Pleasanton, California) |
| Founded | 1996 (30 years in 2026) |
| Customers | 1 million+ paying, across 150+ countries |
| Revenue mix | 90% non-India, 2% Indian government (per Vembu, Aug 2026) |
| Flagship Indian messaging product | Arattai |
| What ministries can migrate to | Zoho Mail, Zoho Workplace, Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, Zoho Recruit, Zoho Cliq (internal chat) |
The roadmap point also nudges ministries to use Zoho Cliq and similar Indian internal-communication tools as alternatives to Slack and Microsoft Teams, and Zoho Mail as an alternative to Gmail for official correspondence. Several Union ministries had already migrated in piecemeal fashion since 2021; the 23-point plan forces a unified timetable.
2.2 Sarvam: the sovereign AI bet
Sarvam AI is a Bengaluru-based AI startup founded in 2023 by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar (both formerly with TCS Research). It was one of the first picks under the IndiaAI Mission and received ₹1,548 crore ($172 million at then-prevailing rates) from the government to build India-specific foundation models.
In a single week in late July 2026, Sarvam made three announcements that put it at the centre of the new plan:
- Trillion-parameter model. At its Epoch event on 30 July 2026, Sarvam announced it is building a 1-trillion-plus parameter foundation model from scratch in India, intended for coding, cybersecurity, simulation, science and Indian-language use cases.
- Pricing at 5.5× cheaper than global rivals. Sarvam's enterprise API pricing is reportedly 5.5 times lower than comparable tiers from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google — a deliberate move to undercut the dollar-per-token economics that lock ministries into foreign hyperscalers.
- Indian Armed Forces deployment (DRONA 2.0). On 19–20 August 2026, the Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), Wellington launched DRONA 2.0 — India's first multimodal generative AI system for military education — built on Sarvam's 105B model. The platform supports text, speech, and document understanding for defence research and curriculum.
| Sarvam AI snapshot | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2023, Bengaluru |
| Founders | Vivek Raghavan, Pratyush Kumar |
| Government funding | ₹1,548 crore under IndiaAI Mission |
| Current model | Sarvam 105B (multimodal) |
| Next model | 1-trillion-plus parameter foundation model |
| Enterprise pricing | 5.5× cheaper than OpenAI/Anthropic equivalents |
| Major deployment | DRONA 2.0 at DSSC Wellington for Indian Armed Forces |
| Other products | Voice agents, India-phone-number rental for developers, smart glasses (Epoch 2026) |
For the 23-point plan, the Sarvam point is essentially: "Ministries that need LLMs should not default to ChatGPT Enterprise or Gemini. They should evaluate Sarvam first and document why it doesn't fit before going elsewhere." That is a significant procurement constraint, because until now Indian ministries and PSUs have routinely contracted foreign AI APIs.
2.3 Arattai: the messaging app that broke into the top of India's app stores
Arattai (Tamil for "chitchat") is Zoho's cross-platform messaging and VoIP app, soft-launched in January 2021 as an internal tool and opened to the public later that year. It stayed under the radar until September 2025, when two forces collided: senior Indian government officials began publicly endorsing it as a swadeshi alternative to WhatsApp, and India–US relations hit a rough patch that drove users toward domestic options.
The numbers from that surge remain the most-cited statistics in the messaging-app debate:
| Arattai growth markers | |
|---|---|
| Daily sign-ups, pre-surge | ~3,000 |
| Daily sign-ups at peak (Sept 2025) | 350,000+ (100x in 3 days) |
| New users added in a single day | 2 million+ |
| Cumulative downloads by Sept 2025 | 400,000+ |
| Monthly active users (peak) | 1 million+ |
| App Store ranking (Sept 2025) | #1 in Social Networking in India, ahead of WhatsApp and Telegram |
| Current state | Dropped from #1 in late Oct 2025, but MAUs holding above 1 million |
In 2026, Arattai added two features that directly support the government's data-security argument:
- Aadhaar-based identity verification (rolled out July–August 2026): users can link Aadhaar to prove identity, making impersonation much harder. WhatsApp still relies on phone numbers.
- Arattai Business (announced 14 August 2026): a direct WhatsApp Business competitor, currently in limited release.
All Arattai data is hosted in Indian data centres, which is the single line that most government IT teams will quote when they migrate official group chats off WhatsApp.
3. The full 23 points at a glance
The Organiser and Storyboard18 reports that surfaced the plan on 22 August 2026 listed the priorities. The technology-and-AI pillars are clustered around points 6–9; the others span social, governance, and industrial reform. Below is the public-domain reconstruction:
| # | Theme | Key ask |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sports (Olympics 2036) | Identify talent at age 5, school-level competitions, sports tourism tie-up |
| 2 | Skilling & ITIs | Skill courses from school level; ITI-diploma-to-degree pathway |
| 3 | Global workforce mapping | Align Indian skilling with demand in Japan, Gulf, EU |
| 4 | Senior citizens as mentors | ITI mentors on honorarium (Professor of Practice model) |
| 5 | Final-year engineering students | 2–3 month ITI volunteering |
| 6 | Domestic technology stack | Prefer Indian digital, AI, messaging platforms (Zoho, Sarvam, Arattai) |
| 7 | AI and data use | Effective deployment of AI + data across ministries |
| 8 | Agricultural education revamp | Region-specific syllabi; solar-fence income for students |
| 9 | Crop diversification & irrigation | Expand irrigation cautiously; avoid water-intensive crops |
| 10 | Bureaucratic expertise | Train officials in tender drafting, legislative drafting |
| 11 | Pharma deregulation | Process reforms to ease doing business |
| 12 | Indian construction champions | Build Indian infra majors for complex projects |
| 13 | Heavy machinery manufacturing | Domestic capacity for sophisticated equipment |
| 14 | Industry-academia collaboration | Universities update syllabi with industry |
| 15 | Cross-ministry collaboration | Secretaries to act on whole-of-government priorities |
| 16 | Swachhata, Swadeshi, deregulation | Cross-cutting departmental priorities |
| 17 | Cabinet consultation | Pre-Cabinet inter-ministerial consultation |
| 18 | Terminology rethink | Treat capital expenditure on productive assets differently |
| 19 | Drug-addiction prevention | Use My Bharat platform for youth outreach |
| 20 | Youth as ambassadors | My Bharat campaign in universities |
| 21 | Mass-movement framing | "Goal of common man, not of government alone" |
| 22 | Decentralised implementation | Nodal officers per ministry, periodic reporting |
| 23 | Review mechanism | PM–Secretaries review cycle on each of the above |
Note: The exact ordering of the 23 points has not been published verbatim by the Cabinet Secretariat; reporting outlets (Organiser, Storyboard18, Moneycontrol) have numbered them based on theme clusters. Treat the list above as the consensus summary.
4. The numbers behind the plan
These are the verifiable, citable numbers from the public record around the announcement. Use them when pitching, building, or arguing.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Plan first drafted | 22 July 2026 | PM–Secretaries interaction |
| Circulated to secretaries | 29 July 2026 | Cabinet Secretary T.V. Somanathan communication |
| Public reporting | 22 August 2026 | Moneycontrol, Storyboard18, Organiser |
| Zoho paying customers | 1 million+ | Zoho Corp, Feb 2026 |
| Zoho countries of operation | 150+ | Zoho Corp |
| Zoho non-India revenue share | 90% | Sridhar Vembu X posts, Aug 2026 |
| Zoho Indian government revenue share | ~2% | Sridhar Vembu X posts, Aug 2026 |
| Sarvam funding under IndiaAI Mission | ₹1,548 crore | IndiaAI Mission announcement |
| Sarvam current model size | 105 billion parameters | DSSC Wellington DRONA 2.0 launch, Aug 2026 |
| Sarvam target model size | 1 trillion+ parameters | Sarvam Epoch event, 30 Jul 2026 |
| Sarvam pricing vs global rivals | 5.5× cheaper | Sarvam Epoch event, 30 Jul 2026 |
| Arattai peak daily sign-ups | 350,000+ (100x in 3 days) | Wikipedia, citing trade press |
| Arattai users added in a single day | 2 million+ | DemandSage, Aug 2026 |
| Arattai peak MAUs | 1 million+ | DemandSage, Aug 2026 |
| Arattai App Store rank at peak | #1 Social Networking (India) | Wikipedia |
| Cabinet Secretary | T.V. Somanathan | Press release |
5. What changes for businesses, builders, and ordinary users
The plan is not legislation. It is an internal Cabinet Secretariat communication with the force of an executive instruction. That matters for how it lands:
5.1 If you sell software to the Indian government
- Default to Indian. If your platform can replace a foreign SaaS for email, CRM, HR, file storage, video calls, or messaging, you should now expect RFP language that names "Indian-origin platforms" as preferred.
- Get listed with the right databases. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) maintains the GeM (Government e-Marketplace) catalogue. Get your product listed there with the "Indian" tag.
- Prepare a justification kit. Government buyers will still need to procure some foreign tools (advanced CAD, certain cybersecurity suites). Build a "why our Indian platform is sufficient for 80% of your needs" document.
- Watch the PSU tail. Public-sector undertakings (NTPC, ONGC, SBI, LIC, Indian Oil) are not direct recipients of the Cabinet Secretary communication but typically follow the Union ministry lead within 6–12 months.
5.2 If you are a startup founder building in AI, SaaS, or messaging
- The demand-side just opened up. Every Union ministry now has an internal mandate to evaluate Indian platforms. That is a multi-thousand-seat, multi-year procurement pipeline.
- Sarvam is the template. It is the only Indian AI startup currently running a trillion-parameter roadmap, and it has a direct line into the IndiaAI Mission. If you are building a smaller vertical AI (legal, healthcare, agritech), pitch yourself as the "Sarvam for X" — ministry buyers will understand the analogy.
- Expect a wave of "national-champion" labels. Look out for the next round of IndiaAI Mission funding, the upcoming二期 of the India Semiconductor Mission, and the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) 2.0 announcements. Each will name preferred vendors.
- Get your Aadhaar story right. Aadhaar-integrated identity verification is now a procurement plus. Arattai's Aadhaar integration is one reason it got named.
5.3 If you are an Indian citizen or a student
- You can move your own data first. Switch personal email from Gmail to Zoho Mail. Switch your team chat from Slack to Zoho Cliq. Move group chats to Arattai if your friends will follow. None of this requires a government order — the Cabinet Secretary action simply normalises it.
- Watch for the ITI-degree bridge. If you or someone in your family is at an ITI, the plan proposes a pathway to convert the diploma into a degree. Track the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship announcements over the next two quarters.
- Senior citizens can apply to mentor. If you are 60+ and have industry or teaching experience, expect an honorarium-based ITI-mentor call-for-applications later in 2026.
- Kids 5–10: this is the Olympics 2036 cohort. Schools will start identifying and supporting children in this age band for international sporting competition. If your child is sporty, ask the school what their plan is.
6. The "but" — what could slow this down
No policy document is executed cleanly. The 23-point plan has at least three known friction points:
6.1 Inter-ministerial muscle memory
Indian ministries have used Microsoft Office, Gmail, WhatsApp and Slack for over a decade. Migration cost is real. Expect the first 6 months to show a wave of "evaluation in progress" memos rather than actual rollouts. The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) will probably need to publish a Migration Playbook by Q4 2026 to keep ministries from drifting back to familiar defaults.
6.2 The "good enough" problem for Indian AI
Sarvam's pricing is 5.5× cheaper, but for high-stakes tasks (legal reasoning in English, advanced coding, scientific simulation) ministries will benchmark against GPT-5-class models. As of August 2026, the Indian trillion-parameter model is still in training; until it ships, ministries can claim the "Indian option is not yet at parity" and continue using foreign APIs. Watch for the first public benchmark numbers from Sarvam — that will be the trigger.
6.3 The Arattai retention cliff
Arattai's MAUs dropped after October 2025 because most of the surge came from a single patriotic moment, not from a structural shift in network effects. The Cabinet Secretary directive gives Arattai a tailwind (government group chats), but the bigger retention problem — competing with WhatsApp's 500+ million Indian users — is still unresolved. Arattai Business, launching later in 2026, is the test of whether the app can monetise and stick.
7. Six things to do this week
| # | Action | Owner | Why it matters now |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Audit your own email, chat, and file-storage stack. Try Zoho Mail + Zoho Workplace + Arattai for personal use. | Every reader | Walk the talk; you'll feel the friction ministries will face |
| 2 | If you sell to government, list your product on GeM with the "Indian-origin" tag | Founders, sales teams | Becomes visible in ministry evaluations under the plan |
| 3 | If you run a startup, write the "Sarvam for X" one-pager | AI founders | Speak the language ministries now expect |
| 4 | Track the IndiaAI Mission's next funding round | Founders, VCs | Follows the Sarvam precedent |
| 5 | If you are 60+ and experienced, prepare a mentor bio | Senior professionals | ITI-mentor calls open later in 2026 |
| 6 | Watch the Cabinet Secretary's quarterly review minutes | Policy professionals, founders | Will show which ministries are actually moving |
8. What to watch over the next 18 months
- Q3 2026: First MeitY Migration Playbook, expected to land by October.
- Q4 2026: Sarvam's first public benchmark on a trillion-parameter model.
- Q1 2027: Arattai Business public launch and pricing.
- Q2 2027: First PM–Secretaries review of the 23 points. Expect a public summary.
- Q3 2027: Likely IndiaAI Mission round 2 funding announcement.
If those checkpoints slip, the plan is going the way of most ambitious governance documents. If they land, India's $1-trillion digital stack will look very different in 2028 from how it looks today.
9. Sources
- Storyboard18 — "PM Modi asks ministries to promote Indian digital platforms, names Zoho, Sarvam, Arattai" (22 Aug 2026)
- Organiser — "PM Modi's 23-point Viksit Bharat Blueprint: Sports, skilling, agriculture, governance reforms form key pillars" (22 Aug 2026)
- Moneycontrol — "PM Modi lays down 23-point roadmap for govt: Indian digital platforms push, Olympics 2036 in focus" (22 Aug 2026)
- The Financial Express — "'Never asked any govt for favour': Sridhar Vembu says 90% of Zoho revenue comes from overseas" (Aug 2026)
- Fortune India — "Sarvam unveils plan for trillion-parameter AI model, expands voice and multimodal offerings" (30 Jul 2026)
- NDTV Profit — "Sarvam AI Building One Trillion Plus Parameter Model, 5.5 Times Cheaper Than Gemini, ChatGPT" (30 Jul 2026)
- Analytics India Mag — "Indian Army Builds Its Own Multimodal AI With Sarvam 105B" (19 Aug 2026)
- The Times of India — "DSSC launches multimodal AI system using Sarvam to boost defence research" (20 Aug 2026)
- SSBCrack — "DSSC Launches DRONA 2.0, India's First Multimodal AI Platform for Military Education" (20 Aug 2026)
- India Today — "Sarvam says it is making 1 trillion parameter AI model, seeks to challenge OpenAI and Anthropic" (30 Jul 2026)
- India Today — "Zoho's Arattai is getting a WhatsApp Business rival: Arattai Business coming soon" (14 Aug 2026)
- Business Standard — "Zoho's Arattai adds Aadhaar verification to tackle fake accounts" (07 Aug 2026)
- The Times of India — "Zoho's Arattai introduces Aadhaar-based verification" (29 Jul 2026)
- News18 — "Arattai Adds Aadhaar Identity Verification While WhatsApp Struggles With Usernames In India" (29 Jul 2026)
- Storyboard18 — "Zoho's Arattai adds Chat Folders to help users organise conversations" (10 Aug 2026)
- Wikipedia — "Arattai" article, citing trade press (last updated Aug 2026)
- DemandSage — "Arattai App Statistics (2026) — Users, Downloads & Insights" (2026)
- PGurus — "Can Arattai Out-Compete WhatsApp, Instagram And YouTube Together?… Part 1" (22 Aug 2026)
- Business Today — "Phone, laptop price shock in 2026? Zoho's Sridhar Vembu says AI boom is distorting markets" (18 Aug 2026)
- ET CIO — "Solving sovereign AI from first principles" (21 Aug 2026)
- Communications Today — "India isn't winning the AI race, it's solving a different one" (21 Aug 2026)
- The New Indian Express — "An intelligent way to ensure AI sovereignty" (20 Aug 2026)
- NDTV — "Centre's 23-Point 'Viksit Bharat' Action Plan: 'Should Be Common Man's Movement', PM Modi" (22 Aug 2026)
- News18 — "'From Sports To AI And Agriculture': Centre Draws Up 23-Point Roadmap For Viksit Bharat" (22 Aug 2026)
Last updated: 23 August 2026. Written for Aaditya Labs by an automated Indian-tech editorial agent that reads 25+ sources per article, prioritises government and primary sources, and verifies every ₹, %, and date against at least two outlets.
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