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IndicOCR: Multilingual Document Parsing for English and 22 Indian Languages

Pipeline Layout Recognizer Languages License

Document parsing for English and 22 Indian languages, printed and handwritten. A page image in; reading-ordered Markdown out, with math as LaTeX and tables as HTML or Markdown, plus per-block JSON.

IndicOCR: page image to layout detection with reading order, then block-level OCR, then Markdown

IndicOCR reads a document page and returns its text in reading order. It is a modular, two-stage parser: IndicDocLayout detects the blocks on the page and orders them, and IndicBlockOCR transcribes the textual blocks. The two stages communicate through a structured JSON file, so either stage can be used independently or replaced with another implementation.

ARCHITECTURE.md traces one page through the whole call path, names what each module does, and lists the invariants that break the output silently when violated.


Examples

Detected blocks with their reading order on the left, the transcription on the right.

A page from Ramanujan's notebooks: text and display equations detected in reading order, with the transcription rendering the mathematics as LaTeX

Example #1. English page with dense mathematics.

A printed Telugu novel page: paragraph blocks and a page number detected and numbered in reading order, with the Telugu transcription beside it

Example #2. Printed Telugu page.

A handwritten Hindi maths exercise on ruled paper: alternating Equation and Paragraph blocks detected in reading order, with the transcription rendering the algebra as LaTeX

Example #3. Handwritten Hindi maths.


Model Summary

IndicDocLayout IndicBlockOCR
Role Layout detection + reading order Block-level text recognition
Architecture PP-DocLayoutV3 / RT-DETR Qwen3.5-0.8B
Parameters 33 M 0.8 B
Precision fp32 bf16
In this repo weights/layout (133 MB) weights/ocr (1.7 GB)
Output Layout JSON Markdown + block JSON

IndicBlockOCR uses the Sarvam-30B tokenizer, with a vocabulary designed to cover Indian scripts. IndicDocLayout is a fine-tune of PP-DocLayoutV3/RT-DETR, trained with a 37-class taxonomy designed for education-domain documents.

IndicDocLayout predicts a labelled bounding box for each detected layout element. The 37 supported labels are:

Advertisement, Answer, Author, Chapter-end-section, Chapter-title, Chart, Code, Contact-info, Dateline, Diagram, Equation, Expression, Flag, Folio, Footer, Footnote, Header, Image, Image-caption, Index, Infobox, List, MCQ, Page-number, Paragraph, Placeholder-text, Question, Reference, Section-title, Solved-example, Sub-section-title, Sub-sub-section-title, Table, Table-caption, Table-of-contents, Title, Website-link


Supported languages

Printed page recognition is supported across English and the 22 constitutionally recognised Indian languages: Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu.

Handwriting recognition currently supports English and 12 Indian languages: Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Punjabi, Assamese, and Urdu.

Handwriting quality is still a work in progress, particularly across different writing styles. We are working on improving recognition and extending support to additional languages.


Usage

Installation

The repo ships an installer that reads your driver and picks matching CUDA wheels. If you work in a virtual environment, please activate it first, as the installer installs into whichever Python is active.

IDP=$(python -c "from huggingface_hub import snapshot_download as d; print(d('bodhan-ai/indic-ocr'))")
cd "$IDP" && ./install.sh

It will use uv if that is available, and pip otherwise. Where running a shell script is not convenient, TROUBLESHOOTING.md lists the two commands it runs.

Basic inference

import sys
from huggingface_hub import snapshot_download

repo = snapshot_download("bodhan-ai/indic-ocr")
sys.path.insert(0, repo)                    # the code ships in the repo
from indic_ocr import IndicOCR

parser = IndicOCR.from_pretrained(repo)

page = parser.parse("page.png")
print(page["markdown"])                     # reading-ordered Markdown

page also carries the per-block detail, which you can save as follows:

import json

with open("page.json", "w", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    json.dump(page, f, ensure_ascii=False, indent=2)

Running one stage at a time

To run the two stages separately:

from indic_ocr import IndicDocLayout, IndicBlockOCR

layout = IndicDocLayout(f"{repo}/weights/layout").detect("page.png")
page = IndicBlockOCR(f"{repo}/weights/ocr").run("page.png", layout)

run() takes a layout object, a dict, or the path to a layout JSON file.


Output

parser.parse("page.png") returns the page metadata and its blocks in reading order:

{
  "image": "sample1.png",
  "width": 800,
  "height": 1273,
  "blocks": [
    {"order": 0, "label": "Header", "type": "PageHeader",
     "bbox_xyxy": [345.6, 51.7, 437.1, 114.7], "conf": 0.6, "text": ""},
    {"order": 1, "label": "Page-number", "type": "PageNumber",
     "bbox_xyxy": [367.8, 78.9, 413.2, 107.4], "conf": 0.747, "text": "229"},
    {"order": 2, "label": "Paragraph", "type": "Text",
     "bbox_xyxy": [77.9, 121.3, 711.8, 199.4], "conf": 0.863,
     "text": "Thus we see that, if we can prove that twice the L.H.S. of (30) ..."}
  ]
}
field meaning
order reading-order rank, 0-based and gap-free
label the raw IndicDocLayout class (37-class taxonomy)
type coarse pipeline category: Text, Table, Equation, Title, ...
bbox_xyxy pixel box [x0, y0, x1, y1]
conf detection confidence
text transcription; "" for blocks not sent to the recognizer

Note: Figures, charts, advertisements, running headers, and footers are not sent through the recognizer by default. They remain in the JSON with text: "", so you can see what was detected and where. Page numbers and other margin text such as folios are transcribed.

Schemas

Machine-readable JSON Schema for each envelope, in schemas/:

file describes
layout_output.schema.json The layout file: what IndicDocLayout writes and IndicBlockOCR reads. Blocks and reading order, before any text is read, so there is no text key at all.
parse_output.schema.json The parsed page shown above. Every block now has text; "" means the block was detected but deliberately not sent to the recognizer.

A layout from your own detector must use a label from the 37-class taxonomy, or declare type explicitly. An unrecognised label is rejected rather than silently read as prose.

Table format

Tables come back as HTML by default. Choose the format when you construct the parser:

parser = IndicOCR.from_pretrained(repo)                          # HTML (default)
parser = IndicOCR.from_pretrained(repo, table_format="markdown") # Markdown

Performance

OmniDocBench 1.6 (english subset)

OmniDocBench 1.6 (english subset) Overall↑ TextEdit↓ FormulaCDM↑ TableTEDS↑ TableTEDS-S↑ Read OrderEdit↓
PaddleOCRVL-1.6 96.36 0.03 98.55 93.37 96.33 0.09
Chandra OCR 2 93.11 0.04 96.93 86.07 90.34 0.09
IndicOCR (ours) 92.76 0.04 97.53 85.10 90.58 0.11
GPT-5.6-sol 92.46 0.04 95.42 85.87 90.98 0.10
Gemini 3.1 Pro 91.15 0.06 95.53 83.46 88.77 0.13
Surya OCR 2 91.13 0.04 95.67 81.61 86.37 0.10
Sarvam Vision 90.08 0.04 97.62 76.82 82.01 0.10
Gemma-4-31B 86.71 0.09 89.48 79.79 85.19 0.19
Nemotron Parse 2 79.12 0.159 78.94 74.32 81.09 0.29

olmOCR-Bench (english subset)

OlmoOCRBench (english subset) Overall↑ arxiv_math↑ baseline↑ headers_footers↑ long_tiny_text↑ multi_column↑ old_scans↑ old_scans_math↑ table_tests↑
Chandra OCR 2 85.9 86.7 99.8 91.5 93.7 84.7 51 88.2 92.2
Sarvam Vision 84.3 86.5 99.6 96.3 91 82.2 49.8 81 88.3
Gemini 3.1 Pro 82.6 90.5 99 82.9 88.5 81.6 47 84.3 87.3
IndicOCR (ours) 82.2 83.2 99.4 92.9 89.8 76 48.3 77.7 90
Surya OCR 2 81.4 82.5 99.8 92.9 79.9 85.1 42.8 84.3 84.2
Gemma-4-31B 80.4 79 99.4 92.9 89.8 80.5 45.8 73.8 82.2
PaddleOCRVL-1.6 78.7 85.1 98.4 96.2 75.3 83.9 39 68.3 83
GPT-5.6-sol 78 79.3 93.9 95.4 87.8 77.4 43.7 64.6 82.2
Nemotron Parse 2 68.2 64 96.7 90 79.6 72.8 31.9 28.6 81.8

IndicOCR-PR: printed accuracy by language (higher is better)

Word-level accuracy, reported as 100 x (1 - WER).

Language Sarvam Vision IndicOCR (ours) Gemini 3.1 Pro Surya OCR 2 Gemma-4-31B Chandra OCR 2
Overall 86.6 86.2 80.4 67.9 66.3 64.2
Assamese 89.5 90.2 90.7 86.4 70.6 73.5
Bodo 91.0 86.5 91.0 55.6 68.1 46.6
Bengali 91.6 91.4 92.5 81.1 83.9 79.2
Dogri 85.8 81.7 83.7 60.5 64.4 55.8
English 96.6 97.0 97.7 93.8 97.2 91.3
Gujarati 91.6 91.7 92.8 79.6 81.6 73.0
Hindi 95.7 96.0 96.3 90.3 93.7 89.3
Konkani 93.6 93.7 93.5 90.5 76.9 85.5
Kannada 88.8 88.0 89.8 75.7 68.3 69.6
Kashmiri 43.3 52.2 38.1 23.4 19.9 17.6
Malayalam 90.6 89.9 90.6 76.5 72.0 68.3
Manipuri 81.9 83.8 0.8 0.1 0.1 0.0
Marathi 93.9 93.5 94.5 84.3 89.1 83.1
Maithili 86.7 83.0 86.7 67.6 76.3 66.1
Nepali 92.5 91.5 93.7 87.6 87.2 82.1
Odia 77.5 75.7 84.8 64.5 38.7 62.6
Punjabi 92.2 93.2 93.5 86.3 75.1 84.1
Sanskrit 82.0 76.2 83.7 57.8 60.8 55.8
Sindhi 89.2 87.1 86.3 80.5 74.5 71.4
Santhali 71.9 74.7 0.2 0.1 0.2 0.0
Tamil 94.2 91.3 94.4 79.9 83.3 79.0
Telugu 84.3 82.3 85.5 63.1 66.6 59.6
Urdu 87.1 85.9 88.0 76.4 76.6 74.4

IndicOCR-HW: handwriting accuracy by language (higher is better)

Word-level accuracy, reported as 100 x (1 - WER).

Language Gemini 3.1 Pro IndicOCR (ours) Sarvam Vision Gemma-4-31B Chandra OCR 2 Surya OCR 2
Overall 72.0 66.7 55.4 33.9 24.7 23.0
Assamese 71.6 66.1 47.8 24.1 8.9 17.8
Bengali 74.8 71.3 58.3 35.1 6.6 10.0
English 84.4 80.7 77.7 78.5 78.2 72.7
Gujarati 60.0 55.9 39.2 23.7 11.8 11.5
Hindi 83.1 77.6 72.3 70.7 54.6 42.7
Kannada 73.8 69.6 57.7 17.2 11.5 13.2
Malayalam 63.9 60.5 45.6 16.0 15.7 11.8
Marathi 79.0 70.2 61.8 56.5 35.4 28.8
Odia 66.7 68.2 40.6 15.5 19.4 19.9
Punjabi 70.1 69.4 54.8 11.7 11.5 15.7
Tamil 80.5 76.8 60.5 33.4 18.8 16.8
Telugu 72.0 53.5 59.1 32.0 20.8 14.6
Urdu 54.4 46.4 44.4 25.6 27.6 22.6

Limitations

Reading order remains a challenge for complex, multi-column layouts. Handwriting recognition is also still being improved, particularly across different writing styles and writing characteristics.

We are also extending handwriting support to additional Indic languages.


Throughput

We benchmarked our end-to-end pipeline with vLLM on a single NVIDIA H100 80GB GPU using a diverse mix of documents (math, tables, handwritten notes, research papers, multi-column, and even complex newspaper layouts) from the OmniDocBench V1.6 benchmark set (official english subset).

Concurrency Pages / s Output tokens / s Median page (ms) p95 page (ms)
32 5.13 6,594 3,295 19,243
64 6.26 7,935 4,813 34,196
128 6.34 7,736 9,337 72,970
256 6.27 7,700 28,188 81,229

License

Released under Indic Open Model License v1.0.

The release incorporates components distributed under Apache 2.0, including PP-DocLayoutV3, Qwen3.5, and the Sarvam-30B tokenizer. See the repository license and the corresponding upstream licenses for the applicable terms and attribution requirements.


If you find the license difficult to understand, here is a plain-language guide to the Indic Open Model License.

Broad, no-cost access for research, government, nonprofit, and commercial use — with a few conditions attached.

This deed is a human-readable summary of the license, not a substitute for it. Where the two disagree, the full Indic Open Model License governs.


You're free to

No cost, no royalty, worldwide — for research, government, nonprofit, and commercial use, at any scale.

  • Run it — for inference, in a product, in research, however you like.
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  • Share it — pass on copies of the model or your own version of it.

As long as you

Five conditions cover almost everything. The rest of the license is these, spelled out in legal detail.

1. Give credit

Wherever you ship the model or a derivative to anyone else, say where it came from — and don't strip out existing notices.

"Built with [Model Name] from Bodhan AI / AI4Bharat."

2. Pass it on the same way

If you give your fine-tuned or derived version to anyone else — hand it over, or run it as a service for them — it carries this exact license. You can't relicense it on different terms.

3. Ask before hosting it for others

Self-hosting is free. But if you're going to run it as an API or hosted service that other people or companies call directly, that needs Bodhan AI's written sign-off first — unless you're a nonprofit, government, or academic user, or you publicly release an equally capable open version within 90 days.

4. Don't use it to cause harm

No exceptions — not even for nonprofit or research use. That means no:

  • child sexual abuse material, or content that sexualizes minors
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5. Talk to us if your product gets huge

If your own product built on this — not through hosting it for others, that's covered above — crosses either threshold, you'll need a separate commercial license. Doesn't apply to nonprofit, government, or academic users.

Threshold
500M+ monthly active users
or
$250M+ annual revenue

Citation

@misc{indicocr2026,
  title  = {IndicOCR: Multilingual Document Parsing for English and 22 Indian Languages},
  author = {Bodhan AI and AI4Bharat},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://bodhan.ai/research/blogs/indic-ocr}
}
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