New Delhi: Avataar, an AI-native transformation company, has unveiled Varya, an indigenous distilled video model designed to make advanced video AI more affordable, accessible, and contextually relevant for India’s next generation of users.
The launch was announced at an event in New Delhi in the presence of S. Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, along with Avataar’s leadership team.
Developed with support from the IndiaAI Mission, Varya is positioned as a breakthrough in AI-powered video generation, reducing the process from 50 generation steps to just four while maintaining output quality. According to Avataar’s internal inference-cost benchmarks, the model can generate video at ₹0.48 per second, delivering up to 10x greater cost efficiency compared to several leading global video models.
Avataar said the model is aimed at enabling large-scale adoption of AI video creation across education, commerce, public services, creators, MSMEs, governance and citizen engagement.
The company emphasised that Varya has been specifically built to understand India’s cultural and linguistic diversity, enabling video outputs that reflect regional contexts, festivals, communities, local environments, food, clothing and everyday experiences.
The company noted that Varya’s use cases span classroom education, product marketing, public communication and storytelling—allowing users to convert simple ideas into video narratives through a streamlined “Idea → Video → Story” workflow.
Avataar was among the companies selected under the IndiaAI Mission to develop indigenous foundation AI capabilities, leveraging subsidised national AI compute infrastructure to accelerate research and development.
Speaking at the launch, Secretary S. Krishnan said, “The launch of one of the foundational models supported under the IndiaAI Mission marks a significant milestone in India’s AI journey. Varya represents the kind of research-led capability building that we seek to enable. It is a proud moment that reflects our commitment to building indigenous AI capabilities and fostering a vibrant deep-tech ecosystem. Through strategic support for foundational models, we are enabling innovation at scale and creating the building blocks for the next generation of AI solutions. We look forward to further strengthening India’s AI capabilities and advancing frugal innovation that is both world class and accessible at population scale.”
Highlighting the importance of efficiency in scaling AI adoption, Sravanth Aluru, CEO and Co-Founder of Avataar, said, “India’s AI opportunity will not be defined only by the largest models. It will also be defined by the most efficient models. Varya demonstrates that frontier-quality video AI can be made dramatically more efficient and accessible. For a country of 1.4 billion people, affordability is not a feature, it is a prerequisite. We believe the next billion stories, lessons, advertisements, services and experiences will be created through AI, and those capabilities must be available to everyone, not just a few.”
Expanding on the company’s broader vision, Aluru added, “Affordable AI is inclusive AI. What Avataar is building with Varya is important because it shifts the conversation from AI capability alone to AI accessibility. India has the talent, the market depth and the imagination to build AI products for population-scale use. Varya is a strong example of how Indian companies can compete globally, not by simply building bigger models, but by building more efficient, context-aware models that expand access.”
Avataar also announced plans to publish a detailed technical report covering Varya’s architecture, distillation methodology and benchmark results, reinforcing its commitment to advancing India’s AI research ecosystem.
