Bud and NxtGen launch ‘M for Coding’, India’s alternative to Claude Code

With over six million developers in India, ‘M for Coding’ offers affordable, high-quality AI tools that support startups and institutions by reducing reliance on costly foreign software, aligning with Digital India and Atmanirbhar Bharat initiatives

NxtGen, India’s sovereign cloud leader renowned for its secure, scalable, and cost-efficient infrastructure and a qualified cloud service provider for the India AI Mission, together with Bengaluru-based Bud Ecosystem, the innovator behind a hardware-agnostic generative AI Foundry, announced ‘M for Coding’. Offered under NxtGen’s ‘M’ GenAI platform and powered by Bud, the new AI-driven coding assistant positions itself as India’s affordable alternative to Claude Code, delivering frontier-grade performance at a fraction of the cost. By dramatically lowering the financial barrier to advanced coding assistance, M for Coding makes cutting-edge generative AI accessible to a far wider spectrum of developers, startups, and enterprises across the country.

With over six million developers across startup ventures, SMEs, academic institutions, and solo practitioners, India has long needed high‐quality AI tools that do not carry prohibitive licensing costs. Many existing global tools such as Copilot and Claude impose fees that are out of reach for early-stage teams and budget-constrained organisations. ‘M for Coding’ addresses this gap. It aligns with national priorities such as Digital India and Atmanirbhar Bharat, providing developers with powerful, reliable tools without dependence on expensive foreign technology.

Performance metrics show that ‘M for Coding’ is highly competitive. In multi-turn software engineering benchmarks, ‘M for Coding’ matches or outperforms leading models like Claude Opus 4.1, OpenAI Codex. In SWE-bench Verified, it scores 73.8, surpassing Claude Sonnet-4’s 70.4 and approaching Opus 4.1’s 74.5. Against other top models, in SWE-bench Verified, ‘M for Coding’ achieves a 70.5 score, outperforming OpenAI GPT-4.1 (48.6) and staying close to Claude Sonnet-4 (68.0). Benchmarks in browser reasoning and tool orchestration likewise reflect M for Coding’s strength, with high marks on WebArena, Mind2Web, BFCL-v3, and TAU-Bench retail and airline domains.

“M for Coding demonstrates that homegrown models can offer both performance and affordability,” said Linson Joseph, CSO of Bud Ecosystem. “By lowering the cost barrier to advanced coding tools, we hope to empower every Indian developer—whether in an enterprise, a startup, an academic lab or working independently—to build, innovate and contribute without constraint.”

At Cypher25, India’s biggest AI Summit & Expo, Linson Joseph announced that M for Coding is now available through NxtGen Cloud’s M GenAI platform. This launch not only extends the reach of advanced coding assistance but also marks a new phase in how developers can leverage generative AI to accelerate software creation. By integrating with a powerful cloud-native platform, M for Coding makes intelligent, AI-driven development more accessible, scalable, and ready to transform coding practices across industries.