IBM India Managing Director Sandip Patel unveiled the Sovereign Core platform at the IBM Think event in Mumbai on 27 September 2026, urging businesses to adopt ‘digital swaraj’.
Patels remarks came amid growing concerns that geopolitical tensions and tighter regulations, especially in the banking sector, are forcing firms to rethink where their data sits and who manages encryption keys. The call for digital sovereignty echoes a broader push across the country for greater control over technology assets.
Sovereign Core is a software stack that can be installed in customer-owned data centres, keeping the control‑plane and key‑management functions in the same jurisdiction as the data. By isolating these critical functions, the platform promises continuous compliance with local data‑residency mandates.
Built on this foundation, IBM Bharat Core delivers AI services and models fine‑tuned for Indian languages and business scenarios, offering reusable building blocks that address the unique needs of domestic enterprises. The stack is benchmarked for quality and scale in Indian contexts, guiding users through the AI lifecycle from model creation to deployment.
In addition to the commercial offering, IBM rolled out the Svaiam reference architecture to help government agencies deploy sovereign AI across ministries, while the MeitY Startup Hub partnership will give deep‑tech startups access to WatsonX and other enterprise‑ready tools.
Local fintech start‑up ShubhTech, which recently migrated its servers to a Mumbai data centre, said the new platform gives it the confidence to meet RBI data‑residency rules without compromising performance.
IBM says it will roll out the platform nationwide by early 2027, positioning India as a hub for sovereign technology solutions.