HMD bundles Indian AI chatbot Indus onto new Vibe 2 5G smartphone

Finnish phone manufacturer HMD has launched the Vibe 2 5G, a midrange smartphone preloaded with the Indus chatbot from Indian AI company Sarvam. The device is priced at ₹10,999 ($114) and features a 6,000 mAh battery. The partnership, which the companies first announced during the India AI summit held in New Delhi in February, represents an attempt to integrate localized artificial intelligence directly into consumer hardware.

The Indus application is powered by Sarvam’s 105-billion-parameter model and supports 22 Indic languages—languages native to the Indian subcontinent. The app also supports mid-sentence code-switching, which allows users to fluidly mix languages mid-conversation, such as switching between Hindi and English. Despite these localized features, the app faces a significant adoption gap compared to global competitors. According to data from Appfigures, the Indus app has been downloaded just over 293,000 times in India across platforms since its launch. By comparison, ChatGPT has recorded 43.9 million downloads in the country.

The partnership is a potential testing ground to gauge appetite for an India-focused chatbot. Ravi Kunwar, HMD’s CEO and vice president for India and APAC, outlined a phased approach to bridging this adoption gap. “With this partnership, the first thing we want to do is get the Indus app to consumers. Once they start using it, we will move to phase two to focus on driving more traction and stickiness. Right now, by preloading the app, we want to be more accessible to users,” Kunwar said.

While the initial rollout is on smartphones, the integration may prove more significant for both companies on simpler hardware. HMD is expected to launch a feature phone—a basic mobile phone with limited functionality compared to smartphones—with Sarvam AI integration in the coming months. This integration may prove more significant for HMD, which held a 4% share of India’s feature phone market in 2025 but has a negligible share of the smartphone market, failing to appear in the top 15 brands according to analyst firm IDC. Meanwhile, Sarvam is on track to become one of the most funded AI startups in the country, with reports of a $300 million funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation.

Why it matters

Bundling a regional AI assistant with affordable hardware is a direct distribution play in a market as large and linguistically diverse as India, where English-language AI tools have limited reach.