India's top private lender HDFC Bank has invested in conversational AI company CoRover.

Ankush Sabharwal, founder & CEO of CoRover, said in a statement that the partnership with HDFC Bank signals a shared commitment to building AI that is sovereign.

Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

CoRover, which was founded in 2016 by Sabharwal, Kunal Bhakhri and Manav Gandotra, has created an enterprise-grade Large Language Model (LLM) called BharatGPT.

The startup develops conversational AI agents, AI Assistants (VideoBot, VoiceBot, ChatBot), and Telephony AI solutions. It has a user base of 1 billion. 

“Development of BharatGPT, which enables exchange of information in multiple Indian languages for a diverse country like India, set apart CoRover for us," Arup Rakshit, group head treasury, HDFC Bank.

In September last year, CoRover had raised $4 million as part of its Series A funding round led by Venture Catalysts. CanBank Venture Capital Fund, IIM Calcutta (Innovation Park) and Lead Angels among other had participated in the funding round.

Indian Generative AI startups raised a total funding of $524 million in the first seven months of 2025, the highest in the last five years, per data firm Venture Intelligence.