Prime Minister Narendra Modi viewed a live demonstration of Indian AI startup Sarvam AI’s technology running on an HMD Nokia feature phone, in a major push to make artificial intelligence accessible to people who do not use smartphones. The demo was a highlight of the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, where HMD India announced a strategic partnership with Sarvam AI.
The collaboration aims to integrate the Sarvam Personal Assistant into Nokia feature phones and HMD devices, bringing advanced AI capabilities to millions of users across India, especially those who do not use smartphones. The demo showcased real-time speech recognition, translation and text-to-speech features in ten Indian languages, a combination aimed squarely at first-time digital users.
HMD India said it plans to roll out the AI-powered features across multiple feature phone models in the coming months. Ravi Kunwar, Vice President and CEO of HMD India and APAC, said the partnership was about taking AI beyond the smartphone-owning population to the hundreds of millions of Indians who still rely on basic phones for calls, messages and payments.
The move is significant because feature phones remain a large part of India’s mobile market, particularly in rural areas and among older users. Putting an AI assistant that understands and speaks Indian languages onto such devices could bring voice-based help with information, payments and government services to people who have so far been outside the AI conversation.
Sarvam AI’s technology is being developed under the IndiaAI Mission and focuses on India’s linguistic and cultural diversity. The partnership aligns with the summit’s theme, “Sarvajana Hitaya, Sarvajana Sukhaya”, which emphasises technology for the welfare and benefit of all, and it reflects the government’s push for home-grown AI that works in Indian languages rather than only in English.
The India AI Impact Summit has drawn global attention to India’s ambitions in artificial intelligence, with the government positioning the country as a place where AI is built for scale and inclusion. The feature-phone announcement fits that pitch: rather than chasing only the most advanced models, Indian companies are being encouraged to build AI that reaches the largest number of people.
For HMD, the maker of Nokia-branded phones, the partnership is also a way to differentiate its feature phones in a market where smartphones dominate the headlines. If the rollout succeeds, the humble feature phone, long written off as a relic, could become one of the most widely used AI devices in the country.
The companies have not yet announced a date for the first AI-enabled feature phones to reach shops, but with the rollout planned over the coming months, the first devices could arrive early next year. For millions of Indians, their first experience of artificial intelligence may come not on a flagship smartphone, but on a phone that costs a fraction of one.
