In a major stride for India’s deep-tech ecosystem, AI-native transformation leader Avataar has officially unveiled Varya, an indigenous, distilled video AI model. Supported by the government’s flagship IndiaAI Mission, Varya is specifically engineered to bring high-quality, frontier video generation to India’s next generation of users at a fraction of current global market costs.
The model was launched at a high-profile press event in New Delhi, presented by S Krishnan, Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), alongside Avataar’s core leadership team.
Distillation tech makes video generation 10x cheaper
Standard generative video models traditionally require massive computational power, iterating through over 50 complex steps to render a clean output. Varya disrupts this paradigm by utilising an advanced machine learning distillation technique (a method where a compact student model replicates a massive teacher model).
This compression reduces the video generation process from 50 steps to just 4 steps without sacrificing output quality. The result? A staggering efficiency boost that allows Varya to generate video at an unprecedented ₹0.48 per second, making it up to 10 times more cost-effective than leading global alternatives.
Tailored for India’s diverse cultural context
Unlike generalized global AI platforms, Varya is hyper-localised. It has been trained to deeply understand and authentically render India’s unique regional contexts, spanning diverse festivals, communities, local cuisines, traditional clothing, and public spaces.
Designed around a seamless Idea → Video → Story user experience, the tool allows anyone to type a text prompt or upload an image to build a continuous visual narrative. This opens massive opportunities across sectors:
- Education: Teachers in rural classrooms can instantly turn complex lessons into localized visual stories.
- MSMEs & E-Commerce: Small businesses can generate professional-grade product video advertisements on micro-budgets.
- Public Services: Citizens and governance bodies can smoothly convert dry public information into accessible regional videos.
Frugal innovation at population scale
By utilising subsidised national AI compute infrastructure provided by the IndiaAI Mission, Avataar underscores the vital role public infrastructure plays in accelerating homegrown corporate innovation.
Avataar CEO and Co-Founder Sravanth Aluru said: “Affordable AI is inclusive AI. India’s AI opportunity will not be defined only by the largest models. It will also be defined by the most efficient models. For a country of 1.4 billion people, affordability is not a feature, it is a prerequisite.”
Echoing this sentiment, MeitY Secretary S Krishnan highlighted the launch as a landmark event for India’s tech landscape, praising it as world-class “frugal innovation” capable of scaling to over a billion users while driving global competitiveness.
Avataar has announced it will soon release a comprehensive technical report detailing Varya’s model architecture, distillation framework, and performance benchmarks for the global tech community.