HMD preloads – HMD’s first smartphone in India, the Vibe 2 5G, arrives preloaded with Sarvam’s Indus AI chatbot, a partnership announced in New Delhi in February. The move aims to test whether an India-focused assistant can win users through affordable hardware, even as Indu
The Vibe 2 5G won’t ask users to go hunting for an AI app. It arrives in India already bundled with one.
Finnish phone maker HMD launched its first smartphone, the Vibe 2 5G, with Sarvam’s Indian AI chatbot Indus preloaded. The two companies first announced the partnership during the India AI summit held in New Delhi in February.
Indus runs on Sarvam’s locally trained 105-billion-parameter model. a scale the companies say is designed to support real conversations. not just keyword responses. The chatbot launched at the same AI summit and is built to support 22 Indic languages. with mid-sentence code-switching—so it can fluidly mix languages during a conversation. such as switching between Hindi and English.
Even with that language focus, there are limits that show how early this push still is. The app doesn’t support offline usage, and it has no integrated device shortcut that lets users invoke the assistant on the spot.
For HMD, the point isn’t just launching Indus—it’s starting usage.
“With this partnership. the first thing we want to do is get the Indus app to consumers. ” said Ravi Kunwar. HMD’s CEO and Vice President for India and APAC. in an interview with TechCrunch. “Once they start using it, we will move to phase two to focus on driving more traction and stickiness. Right now, by pre-loading the app, we want to be more accessible to users,” he said.
The handset itself targets the mid-range segment. The Vibe 2 5G is an Android phone with a 6,000mAh battery and is priced at ₹10,999 ($114). Kunwar added that devices in the Vibe series will also get the chatbot. HMD is also expected to launch a feature phone with Sarvam AI integration in the coming months.
That may be where the partnership’s real test begins. Feature phones still matter in India. and HMD has a foothold there: the company held a 4% share of India’s feature phone market in 2025. But its smartphone presence is close to invisible—HMD doesn’t even appear in the top 15 for smartphones. according to analyst firm IDC.
Downloads so far suggest Indus still has a distance to cover. Nearly three months after its launch, the app has been downloaded just over 293,000 times in India across platforms, according to Appfigures. ChatGPT, by comparison, was downloaded 43.9 million times in the country.
The gap is stark. But the bet behind the HMD deal looks less like a sprint to compete with global AI brands and more like a distribution experiment: bundle a regional assistant with affordable phones. including feature phones. in a market as large and linguistically diverse as India—where English-language AI tools have limited reach.
Sarvam has positioned itself as one of India’s marquee AI startups. Beyond Indus, the company has emphasized enterprise partnerships, especially for voice-based solutions. It’s also on track to become one of the most funded AI startups in the country. with reports suggesting a funding round of $300 million at a $1.5 billion valuation is in the works.
Indus is early, the downloads are modest, and the phone shortcut isn’t there yet. Still, HMD’s first India smartphone is built around one clear idea: if users can be reached at scale through hardware they already trust, an India-first chatbot might finally get a fair chance to stick.
HMD Vibe 2 5G Sarvam Indus chatbot AI summit New Delhi India AI 105-billion-parameter model Indic languages code-switching mid-range Android feature phone integration smartphone market share Appfigures downloads
So it’s basically a phone with an AI app already on it? That’s kinda cool I guess but why can’t it work offline??
I don’t get it, if it’s “India-focused” why is it for 22 languages but still needs internet lol. Also “mid-sentence code-switching” sounds like something that could go wrong fast.
Wait so the phone just preloads the chatbot and you don’t have to download it… but you also can’t use it offline. That seems backwards? Like what’s the point of preloading if it still won’t help when you’re on the subway.
105 billion parameters?? That number sounds made up, like they just picked it because it sounds big. And “designed to support real conversations” sounds like marketing speak. If it doesn’t even have a shortcut to pull it up instantly then I’m not impressed.