AI voice assistant VIVA of Bengaluru fin-tech company Vernacular.i, which understands 16 languages and more than 160 dialects, is being implemented in ATMs in rural India
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The dream of creating a startup took Saurabh Gupta and Akshay Deshraj, IIT-Roorkee alumni, to Bengaluru. To understand the next Arab clientele and their needs, he traveled from village to village across India for years, and his search ended when he met a farmer who told him about the difficulties he faced while engaging with the bank Told. The farmer explained that the messages he received are in English, a language he does not understand, so he has to travel 10 kilometers to get translated and in the process he loses his day’s earnings.
Around this time, Saurabh was visiting his hometown in Punjab. He went to the Chandigarh airport, collected cash from an ATM, and left for his home in Ludhiana. On arrival, it was revealed that he had left a debit card at the ATM.
Since the drive to the ATM was two hours, Saurabh decided to block his card through the app. But he could not figure out how. He tried the same with Internet banking and was unsuccessful again. Eventually, he was able to block his card through a call center that took him about 30 minutes, including three attempts to find the correct key sequence to reach the call center agent.
Not to bot
- One challenge with speech is understanding users’ feelings. Saurabh explains that the machine can unlock important figures at once, whether the user is angry, happy or sad. It is one of the primary research areas of Vernacular.ie.
- Saurabh believes that some things, such as reporting fraud, should not be handled by a bot because when a user is agitated and frustrated, a human being must come to the aid to keep certain procedures.
Multilingual blocking for rural banking users, coupled with communication issues at call centers, led Vernacular.ie. Saurabh, co-founder and CEO of Vernacular.ai, says, “Simple enough not to take as long as it should.” Metroplus.
The Bengaluru startup is an artificial intelligence-first SaaS (software as a service) business that is enhancing the customer experience through voice conversation. It provides a multilingual AI-based automation platform named Vernacular Intelligent Virtual Assistant (VIVA), designed to engage in natural conversations.
The company helps enterprise customer contact centers automate customer inquiry centers using VIVA. The assistant has the ability to understand more than 16 languages and more than 160 dialects. The platform can help automate up to 80% of call center operations.
how it works
The importance of technologies such as AI and voice technology became more evident during the epidemic. Since travel was limited, more and more people shifted to digital methods of engagement.
Saurabh believes that customers want quicker query resolution and easier access, and multilingualism is an important aspect of this as more native-language speakers are coming online. Therefore, translation, transliteration and speech in regional languages are important in today’s scenario.
Saurabh explains, “One hundred million Internet users in India are not taking advantage of digital banking as such facilities are not available in their regional languages.” While people don’t understand English, many don’t even understand the multilingual keyboard, he says.
This is why Voice is going to be a very intuitive way to connect with online interfaces. Vernacular.ie aims to help regional language speakers communicate with call centers in their own languages and find solutions to their curiosities.
The co-founders of Vernacular.ai are Saurabh Gupta and Akshay Deshraj.
Technology and algorithms created by the Vernacular.ie team have two important engines: speech-to-text and text-to-speech.
The complexity of dialects, accents and languages in the country made it difficult to train the system. Therefore, different data was collected from each region, so the machine could understand and differentiate between different dialects and accents. For instance, there is a difference between how a person in Hindi speaks Hindi and how a Delhiite is, and how to train the system to distinguish between the two.
Saurabh explains that his machine is trained not only in languages and dialects but also in local and Indian cultural nuances. He said that the algorithms for these languages are specially built, with the accuracy of Vernacular.e being 15 to 20% higher than any other speech engine.
‘World of voice command’
Talking about the future of AI and voice, he says, “We are moving towards the world of voice commands, where many interfaces will exist.” AI will add one trillion dollars to the Indian economy by 2035 and the market is about to explode in the next few years. “
Saurabh says that two years ago, they had only one customer, but today they serve more than 25 enterprises in a number of sectors, such as Finance and Beverage in Finance and Axis Bank within the Barbeque Nation.
“We have expanded to Southeast Asia and America,” he says. Expanding into these areas makes sense because South East Asia is similar to India in terms of language complexity and customer nature. America is the most mature market for our technology and becoming a global leader would not be possible without entering America. “
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