The diversity of India is magical and it can be seen in the number of languages people around us speak. Earlier this week we celebrated International Mother Language Day and we spoke to two tech initiatives — Dubverse.AI and Language Curry — that are trying to connect its users to their heritage.

Dubverse.AI

Dubverse allows AI-powered video dubbing in 30-plus languages at lightning-fast speed. The platform enables content creators to dub a video in any language, in almost real-time for half the cost. The platform’s Video In-Video Out process uses deep learning and AI to make every video multilingual. Aside from reducing costs, this saves a lot of time for creators — roughly 10x time efficiency, compared to standard translators.

Hear it from: Anuja Dhawan, co-founder, Dubverse.AI

Anuja Dhawan, co-founder, Dubverse.AI

The conceptualisation phase

Understanding the inadequacy of solely English content, we embarked on a transformative journey to repurpose educational materials into a multitude of languages. Our commitment to humanizing AI speakers sets us apart, ensuring seamless engagement through nuanced tonality and well-timed pauses.

In just one year, we’ve launched over 30-plus AI speakers, reaching millions of users, and facilitating learning experiences across the globe. This widespread acceptance is not merely a milestone but a testament to our dedication to inclusivity and accessibility in imparting education and curating every piece of video content, producing more than 60k-plus hours, which is almost 10 years’ worth of audio content, in 30-plus languages.

Level of accuracy

Dubverse leverages a sophisticated in-house built AI algorithm for video dubbing, ensuring impressive accuracy. Our machine-generated output achieves approximately 80 per cent accuracy for high-quality input videos. Human-in-the-loop review, primarily for nouns and time synchronisation, fine-tunes the final output. This seamless review process occurs within our user-friendly studio, empowering creators to edit according to their brand guidelines effortlessly from the platform, making changes in real-time and downloading ready-to-publish videos with subtitles.

What sets us apart is our remarkable speed: We can produce one hour of dubbed content in under 10 minutes. This rapid turnaround enables creators to enhance content value by efficiently repurposing it into multiple languages, maximising outreach and engagement.

Advantages that Dubverse enjoys

Dubverse offers a significant advantage over dubbing options on YouTube. While YouTube is a major player in the video publishing market, it offers limited translation options, primarily focusing on closed captions (CC) for a select number of languages. In contrast, Dubverse empowers creators across the board to dub videos, spanning a wide range of languages and speaker options.

Our platform is a comprehensive solution for creators, offering features like auto-subtitling, text-to-speech, voice cloning, and more. We continuously expand our offerings to include additional functionalities such as title generation and script suggestions, all powered by AI. Dubverse aims to be the ultimate destination for all AI-enabled tools that enhance the content creation process, providing creators with unmatched convenience and efficiency.

Moreover, Dubverse collaborates with creators across platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Kajabi, Classplus, Skillshare and many more, ensuring accessibility and versatility across various content creation channels.

Tackling the problem of a flat-sounding voice

Dubverse tackles the challenge of flat-sounding AI voices with a multi-faceted approach. While AI voice technology continues to evolve, akin to a baby learning a new language, we acknowledge its ongoing improvement. Therefore, we prioritise learning content, emphasizing the significance of contextual understanding in videos.

To enhance the naturalness of AI voices, we’ve developed proprietary technology that curates Indian speakers with a human-like effect, incorporating emotions and pauses. Initially focusing on Indian languages, we’re expanding to launch multi-lingual models including global languages. Additionally, we offer voice cloning for select languages, enabling speakers to improve while preserving the original tonality.

By combining innovative technology with a deep understanding of linguistic nuances, Dubverse ensures that AI voices resonate authentically, enhancing the overall viewer experience. Our dedication to continuous improvement drives us towards delivering increasingly lifelike and engaging audio content.

Support from Google

Google has played an instrumental role in supporting Dubverse’s journey towards success. From connecting us with key players in the startup ecosystem as part of the prestigious batch of 20 innovative founders to facilitating connections with investors during demo days, the Google experience has been unparalleled. We are honoured to be part of Google for Startups’ growing portfolio.

Further, insights gained from connecting with internal teams at Google have been invaluable. Understanding their vision for the future, especially considering YouTube’s status as the largest video distributor, has greatly influenced our execution strategy. Further, we are proud to be a preferred partner for dubbing by YouTube. Collaborating with YouTube’s regional teams has allowed us to forge connections with creators, contributing to our ongoing success.

Language Curry

Language Curry is a language-learning platform, with a keen focus on Indian languages. It ensures users not only learn the language but also gain insight into the culture of the people speaking that language.

Hear it from: Aneesha Jyoti, co-founder, Language Curry

Language Curry versus Duolingo and others

Aneesha Jyoti, co-founder, Language Curry

Language Curry is a focused app for Indian languages and culture; the app offers 12 Indian languages and various cultural courses. Duolingo is the biggest brand for language learning globally but its focus has been largely on popular world languages and English. We would like to call ourselves the Duolingo for Indian languages. What makes us different from other apps is the focus on culture, we realised very early that cultural integration was one of the biggest motivators to learn a language and thus we integrated cultural learning with language and aim to make this a deeper focus in the future.

Challenges and opportunities

The biggest challenge has been to raise funds for the startup. Language learning isn’t always seen as a high-growth sector, and not many players have attempted to make a mark in the Indian languages space. Also, in recent years, the sentiment around education has taken a hit, which has impacted us as well. Despite the odds, with little funds, we have been able to establish a large market as Language Curry has two million downloads from 185 countries.

The opportunity for Language Curry lies in the choice that we made to focus on India, India’s cultural diversity is unmatched in the world and only an Indian startup can do justice to preserve and promote culture on the global level. We aspire to extend language learning to students in the future which will support the government’s National Education Policy which mandates learning of a third language to be an Indian regional language.

The initial idea

I lived the life of an NRI in Canada for 10 years before I decided to move back to India. In Canada, I saw the need for the Indian diaspora to be connected to their roots, and language is the first connection to any culture. There existed various platforms for learning popular world languages but none for Indian languages. This sparked the idea for Language Curry. Today we are happy to see the demand for Indian language learning exists even in India as over 80 per cent of our downloads happen from India.

Help from Google

Google gave us access to the best mentors and subject matter experts to build the app, improve on the app functionalities, and help the team focus on aspects that are key in building a stronger product. From tech to marketing, Google gave us a 360-degree mentorship, which is very helpful for an early-stage startup.

Language-learning trends

As India grows stronger economically, the cultural pride amongst Indians is also growing stronger. Indians are trying to delve deeper into culture which is why Sanskrit is one of the top languages learnt on the app. Urban migrants are also showing interest in learning the local language to be more connected to the culture which is why Kannada and Marathi are very popular languages being learnt by Indians.